《伦理学》，第V部分，命题6
The mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary.
证明
The mind understands all things to be necessary (I. xxix.) and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes; therefore (by the foregoing Proposition), it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising therefrom, and (III. xlviii.) feels less emotion towards the things themselves. Q.E.D.
附释
The more this knowledge, that things are necessary, is applied to particular things, which we conceive more distinctly and vividly, the greater is the power of the mind over the emotions, as experience also testifies. For we see, that the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives, that it could not by any means have been preserved. So also we see that no one pities an infant, because it cannot speak, walk, or reason, or lastly, because it passes so many years, as it were, in unconsciousness. Whereas, if most people were born full--grown and only one here and there as an infant, everyone would pity the infants; because infancy would not then be looked on as a state natural and necessary, but as a fault or delinquency in Nature; and we may note several other instances of the same sort.
Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata), 由R. H. M. Elwes译自拉丁文.
首次出版于The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza，第II卷（London：George Bell and Sons，1884）。
本译文在美国已超出版权保护期（1884年出版于美国），在版权期限为作者终身加100年或更短的任何地方同样如此；其译者卒于1892年。
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