The essay likewise gives to my mind strong reasons against
holding (though it is commonly assumed as if it were certain) that
Spinoza was ever actually a Cartesian. For though as to certain
parts it is Cartesian in language and arrangement, in those very
parts the essay enunciates anti- Cartesian doctrine even more
pointedly than the Ethics afterwards did. Not only is it denied
that sorrow and the passions derived from it can ever be useful —
whereas Descartes says that sorrow is in a manner even more
necessary for men than joy — but all passions whatever, except the
divine love,^ and, in a qualified sense, one or two others of the
more active kind, are repudiated as unworthy of the philosophic
life. If Spinoza was a Cartesian at any time it must have been
before the essay was written ; and moreover he could not have
become a Cartesian without utterly breaking with the Jewish
philosophic traditions, on whose lines, however, or at any rate
from out of them, he is working in the essay. We should be
driven to suppose, then, that Spinoza broke with Jewish literature
to take up Descartes, and becoming dissatisfied with Descartes,
turned back again to the Jewish authors. ^ But violent oscillations
of this kind are not in Spinoza's character, to say nothing of the
time between Spinoza's introduction to Descartes and his compo-
sition of this essay being too short to afford room for them.
And even so the essay should present to us, not a juxtaposition

1 In treating this as a passion the Essay differs from the Ethics.
