"Concerning God" Spinoza, excerpt

"Hence any one who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder of which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would also vanish. "After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality of everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they are bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions praise, blame, sin and merit." Pp.74-75, "Appendix, of Concerning God," THE ETHICS, by Benedict de Spinoza (Prometheus Press, Amherst. NY: 1677, 1982)