[1] Cp. _Eth_. IV. _Appendix_, xxxii. 'Ea quae nobis eveniunt contra id, quod nostrae utilitatis ratio postulat, aequo animo feremus, si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse, et potentiam, quam habemus, non potuisse se eo usque extendere, ut eadem vitare possemus, nosque partem totius naturae esse, cujus ordinem sequimur. Quod si clare et distincte intelligamus, pars illa nostri, quae intelligentia definitur, hoc est, pars melior nostri, in eo plane acquiescet et in ea acquiescentia perseverare conabitur. Nam quatenus intelligimus, nihil appetere nisi id, quod necessarium est, nec absolute nisi in veris acquiescere possumus; adeoque quatenus haec recte intelligimus, eatenus conatus melioris partis nostri cum ordine totius naturae convenit.' _Eth_. IV. Preface ... 'Per _bonum_ ... intelligam id, quod certo scimus medium esse, ut ad exemplar humanae naturae, quod nobis proponimus, magis magisque accedamus.... Deinde homines _perfectiores_ aut _imperfectiores_ dicemus, quatenus ad hoc idem exemplar magis aut minus accedunt.'
41. The conclusion, then, is that Spinoza did really, though not explicitly, believe in a final cause determining human life. That is to say, he held that the conception of an end consisting in the greater perfection of life on the part of the individual and the community might, and to some extent did, determine the life of the individual and the community. He would have said no doubt that this end, like every good, existed only in our consciousness; that it was 'nihil positivum in rebus in se consideratis' (_Ethics_, IV. Preface); but an existence of the end in human consciousness, determining human action, is a sufficiently real existence, without being 'positivum in rebus.' But he made the mistake of ignoring the more confused and mixed forms in which the conception of this end operates; of recognising it only in the forms of the philosophic 'amor Dei,' or in the wisdom of the exceptional citizen, whom alone he would admit 'ratione duci.' And in particular he failed to notice that it is the consciousness of such an end to which his powers may be directed, that constitutes the individual's claim to exercise them as rights, just as it is the recognition of them by a society as capable of such direction which renders them actually rights; in short that, just as according to him nothing is good or evil but thinking makes it so, so it is only thinking that makes a might a right,--a certain conception of the might as relative to a social good on the part at once of the person or persons exercising it, and of a society which it affects.