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It is indeed original to interpret the Ethics by means of the method which Spinoza himself recommended for the interpretation of the Bible in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In so doing the author arrives at the following conclusion: 'Contrary to the uncritical assumption of contemporary writers that Spinoza's philosophy constitutes a systematic unity, we maintain that an unprejudiced analysis of his work reveals no such inner harmony and consistency even though Spinoza's mathematical method of deduction gives one the impression of strict logical rigor' (p. 12).
The incoherences in Spinoza's work in general and in his psychology of emotions in particular resulted from the philosopher's attempt to reconcile his mechanistic premises with the scholastic, neoplatonic and stoic doctrines. The inconsistency in the theory of emotions was especially a consequence of the incompatibility of the psychophysical parallelism and the scholastic doctrine of the autonomy of the intellect. Dr. Bidney, nevertheless, assures us that this criticism does not 'refer to the truth value of Spinoza's work'. On the contrary he tries to show how great an influence Spinoza's