Baruch Spinoza

Extract : A GREAT system of philosophy is exposed to that kind of injustice which arises from the multiplicity of its interpreters, and from the fact that these interpreters are apt to contemplate and criticise it, not from the point of view of its author, but from their own. Critics and commentators of different schools and shades of opinion are naturally desirous to claim for their own views the sanction of a great writer's name, and uncon- sciously exercise their ingenuity in forcing that sanction when it is not spontaneously yielded. If any ambigui- ties or inconsistencies lurk in his doctrines, they are sure to be brought to light and exaggerated by the tendency of conflicting schools to fasten on what is most in ac- cordance with their own special principles. And even when a writer is on the whole self-consistent, it is pos- sible for a one-sided expositor so to arrange the lights and shadows, so to give prominence to what is incidental and throw into the shade what is essential, as to make him the advocate of ideas really antagonistic to his own...