by Benedict de Spinoza

About the author: Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) was a Dutch philosopher. Born a Sephardic Jew, as a young man he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his thoughts and practices. Spinoza proposed that people are guided by their own natures, and that virtuous people understand their own natures and ultimately seek to understand the nature of God. Spinoza wrote the books A Treatise on Religious and Political Philosophy, Political Treatise, and Ethics, from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

Ishould like to say a few words about perfection and imperfection, and about good and evil. If a man has proposed to do a thing and has accomplished it, he calls it perfect, and not only he, but every one else who has really known or has believed that he has known...