Selections usually need no justifications. Some justification, however, of the treatment accorded Spinoza's _Ethics_ may be necessary in this place. The object in taking the _Ethics_ as much as possible out of the geometrical form, was not to improve upon the author's text; it was to give the lay reader a text of Spinoza he would find pleasanter to read and easier to understand. To the practice of popularization, Spinoza, one may confidently feel, would not be averse. He himself gave a short popular statement of his philosophy in the _Political Treatise_. The lay reader of philosophy is chiefly, if not wholly, interested in grasping a philosophic point of view. He is not interested in highl…
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