[1] Were it as easy to control people's minds as to restrain their tongues, every sovereign would rule securely and there would be no oppressive governments. For all men would live according to the minds of those who govern them and would judge what is true or false, or good or bad, in accordance with their decree alone. But as we noted at the beginning of chapter 17, it is impossible for one person's mind to be absolutely under another's control. For no one can transfer to another person his natural right, or ability, to think freely and make his own judgments about any matter whatsoever, and cannot be compelled to do so. This is why a government which seeks to control people's minds is considered oppressive, and any sovereign power appears to harm its subjects and usurp their rights when it tries to tell them what they must accept as true and reject as false and what beliefs should inspire their devotion to God. For these things are within each person's own right, which he cannot give up even were he to wish to do so.

[2] A person's judgment, admittedly, may be subjected to another's in many different and sometimes almost unbelievable ways to such an extent that, even though he may not be directly under the other person's command, he may be so dependent on him that he may properly be said to be under his authority to that extent.

[1] True joy and happiness lie in the simple enjoyment of what is good and not in the kind of false pride that enjoys happiness because others are excluded from it. Anyone who thinks that he is happy because his situation is better than other people's or because he is happier and more fortunate than they, knows nothing of true happiness and joy, and the pleasure he derives from his attitude is either plain silly or spiteful and malicious. For example, a person's true joy and felicity lie solely in his wisdom and knowledge of truth, not in being wiser than others or in others' being without knowledge of truth, since this does not increase his own wisdom which is his true felicity. Anyone therefore who takes pleasure in that way is enjoying another's misfortune, and to that extent is envious and malign, and does not know true wisdom or the peace of the true life.

When therefore Scripture states that God chose the Hebrews for himself above other nations (see Deuteronomy 10.15) so as to encourage them to obey the law, and is near to them and not to others (Deuteronomy 4.4–7), and has laid down good laws solely for them and not for others (Deuteronomy 4.2), and has made himself known to them alone, in preference to others (see Deuteronomy 4.32), and so on, Scripture is merely speaking according to their understanding.

In the years after the publication of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza gradually added a number of supplementary notes in the margins of his own personal copy which we know he wished to see added to the published version. “I should like you”, he wrote to Henry Oldenburg, in September 1675,“to point out to me the passages in the Tractatus Theologio-Politicus which have proved a stumbling-block to learned men. For I want to clarify this treatise with some additional notes and, if possible remove the prejudices which have been conceived against it.” The copy furnished with these Adnotationes was sent from The Hague to his publisher, Jan Rieuwertsz, in Amsterdam, after Spinoza's death, in 1677, along with the rest of his manuscripts and papers. Although this original version subsequently disappeared without trace, most of the notes appeared in the French version of the Tractatus, in 1678, while the remainder, and nearly all those previously known only in the French version, were rediscovered in modern times. They were found, in their Latin versions, as hand-written explanatory notes on various manuscripts and printed copies of the book.

Metamorphōsēs and this selection

Ovid's roughly twelve-thousand-line, fifteen-book Metamorphōsēs (‘Changes of shape’) is classed as an epic (like all epics it was composed in hexameters). It offers a supposedly temporal sequence of myths that starts with the formation of the world and ends with Ovid's contemporary, the emperor Augustus. Its title derives from the fact that almost all the stories involve transformations of one sort or another, about two hundred and fifty in all, mostly of humans. Ovid treats each one with inimitable brilliance, turning Metamorphōsēs into (if nothing else) a treasure-house of wonderful stories. But since these stories of transformation are all self-contained narratives, often without any obvious connection with each other, Ovid has to employ a range of ingenious devices in order to weave them together into a continuous narrative. As a result, Metamorphōsēs is quite unlike any other epic, and rather difficult to summarise. One (among many) ways of doing so is to divide it into three sections. In books 1–6 it recounts stories mainly of gods (e.g. Apollo and Daphne, Jupiter and Io, Jupiter's rape of Europa, Dionysus and Pentheus, Mars and Venus); books 7–10 concentrate on the heroes of myth (e.g. Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, the Minotaur, the Calydonian boar, Hercules, Orpheus and Eurydice); and in books 11–15 Ovid turns to ‘history’ (the siege of Troy, the stories of Aeneas, Romulus and early Roman kings like Numa), before unfolding some lengthy ‘philosophical’ speculations on vegetarianism and the nature of change by the sixth-century bc Greek philosopher Pythagoras.

Background

Conversation over Achelous' dinner table turns to other examples of metamorphosis, and Achelous admits he can change into a (limited) number of different shapes at will. This leads him to tell the story of his losing battle with Hercules, and when the party breaks up Ovid continues the Hercules theme with tales of his death and birth. Alcmene, Hercules' mother, is told the story of Dryope who picked a plant to amuse her baby and was turned into a lotus tree. The next stories concern Hercules' nephew Iolaus, who has been restored to youth, and of Callirhoe, who will win a concession from Jupiter to increase the age of her sons. They raise among the gods the question of getting old.

The gods are less than enthusiastic about this idea, but Jupiter tells them that fate cannot be avoided and points to various of his own sons, Minos included, who are bowed down in years. Ovid now tells how the power of the aged Minos was being threatened by the youthful son of Apollo and Deione, Miletus (after whom the powerful city on the coast of Asia Minor was named); and this leads Ovid to tell the story of the twins born to Miletus by Cyanee, daughter of the river-god Maeander. Their names are Byblis and Caunus, and Byblis has conceived a more than ordinary love for her handsome brother. Consumed with desire, she wrestles desperately with her conscience but finally decides she can hide her feelings for him no longer; she must communicate them, somehow, to him.