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Benedict de Spinoza lived a life of blameless simplicity as a lens-grinder in Holland. And yet in his lifetime, he was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a heretic, and after his death his words were first banned by the Christian authorities as atheistic, then hailed by humanists as the gospel of Pantheism. His "Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order" shows us the reality behind this enigmatic figure. First published by his friends after his premature death at the age of 44, the "Ethics" uses the methods of Euclid to describe a single entity, properly called both "God" and "Nature", of which mind and matter are two manifestations. From this follow, in ways that are strikingly modern, the identity of mind and body, the necessary causation of events and actions, and the illusory nature of free will.

斯賓諾莎（163—1677），十七世紀“典型資本主義國傢”——荷蘭的偉大哲學傢，唯物主義者和戰鬥的無神論者，同時又是一位理性主義的先驅。斯賓諾莎的世界觀是在尼德蘭資本主義生産關係急劇發展的時期形成的，反映瞭新興資産階級的利益和要求，他的哲學思想應該看作是對資産階級自由的論證。