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His agreement with them comes out most clearly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
His "Ethics" and "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" constitute a system of philosophy which has had no little influence on modern thought. He printed a book called "The Deist's Manual." I think I may assert, without the least partiality, that it is a treatise wholly devoid of wit or learning, under the most violent and weak endeavours and pretences to both.
Spinoza in his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter and the remarkable Hibbert Lectures of Mr. Montefiore. This movement, however, is chiefly confined to the Western Jews.
The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus ad Veritatis Lancem Examinatus weighed in Truth's balance, indeed. A title that draws. They say 'tis the best of all the refutations of the pernicious and poisonous Tractate." "Of which I see sundry copies here masked in false titles." "'Sh! Forbidden fruit is always in demand. But so long as I supply the antidote too " "Needs fruit an antidote?"
As for expressing his thoughts, he made no public addresses and during his life only one of his books was printed. This was the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," which mentioned "Hamburg" on the title page, but with the author's name wisely omitted. Trite enough now are the propositions laid down that God is everywhere and that man is brother to the tree, the rock, the flower.
For apart from the mere stylistic difficulties of the Ethics and some detail of his metaphysical doctrine, the few great and simple ideas which dominate his philosophy are quite easy to understand especially if one uses the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as an introduction to them.
Also, in letters written that same year to William Blyenbergh one finds expressed some of the chief conclusions published five years later in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. And Spinoza wrote, at this early period, not conjecturally or speculatively, but as one writes who knows the firm and tested grounds of his belief.
The only other book Spinoza published in his lifetime the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus bore on its title page Spinoza's initials only, and the name of a fictitious Hamburg publisher. It was then an open secret who the author was. Spinoza's personal rule to incur as little official displeasure as possible made him abandon his final literary project entertained in 1675.
The system of Spinoza, as developed in his "Tractatus Theologico-politicus," and, still more, in his "Ethica," a posthumous publication, may be said to contain the germs of the whole system both of Theological and Philosophical Rationalism which was subsequently unfolded, in the Church, by Paulus, Wegscheider, and Strauss, and, in the Schools, by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Only in quite recent years has some advance been made back to the sane naturalistic conception of morals which is found in the Greeks and also in Spinoza. It is a fundamental point with Spinoza that the ceremonial law, as he puts it in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, can at best secure man wealth and social position. Man's highest blessedness can be secured by the divine law of Nature alone.
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