SOURCE: Introduction to Ethics by Spinoza, translated by G. H. R. Parkinson, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1989, pp. vii-xx.

In the following essay, Parkinson studies Spinoza's life in order to elucidate the philosophical questions that animate the Ethics.

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most difficult of philosophical works. Yet it continues to exercise a peculiar fascination, and this is by no means confined to philosophers. One of Spinoza's admirers was the poet Goethe—indeed, Goethe was partly responsible for the upsurge of interest in Spinoza late in the eighteenth century, and encouraged the publication of the first complete edition of Spinoza's works. In the middle of the nineteenth century (to be exact, between 1854 and 1856) George Eliot worked on, but did not publish, a translation of the Ethics; however, another novelist, William Hale White, published a translation in 1883, and this has been widely used. It may also be significant...