Conatus Daily

Thursday, October 1
one proposition, one affect, one reading.

A page that turns over at your midnight. Spinoza’s Ethics a proposition at a time, one of his forty-eight affects with its remedy, and what moved in the Conatus Scanner. Five minutes, then go and live it.

The proposition

E4p63

He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.

Doing good out of fear is not living by reason. Fear can produce good behaviour, but not a free person.

Today. Find one good thing you do only out of fear, and find a better reason for it.

Read it in the EthicsTrace it to the axioms

The affect

Gratitude

Thankfulness or Gratitude is the desire or zeal springing from love, whereby we endeavour to benefit him, who with similar feelings of love has conferred a benefit on us. Cf. III. xxxix. note and xl.

One move. Return the good freely. The desire to benefit someone who benefited you is one of the joining affects.

How could you return this without making it a transaction?

In Spinoza’s MirrorWrite today’s entry

The scanner

What moved

Score moves load from the scanner’s daily feed. Read the feed.

A business, read by its causes

Nextpower Inc. NXT

Technology · conatus score 94.9 of 100 · fiscal 2025

  • Power20
  • Persistence20
  • Self-funding18
  • Striving20
  • Independence16.9

Free cash flow yield, the price of the cause: 4.3%

Scores as of 2026-09-29. A reading of causes, not a recommendation: in the scanner’s own backtest the score has not shown a reliable return edge.

Open the Conatus Scanner

The cycle

61 propositions,
in the order of the book.

One a day, from God to blessedness, then round again. The affects run on their own cycle of 48, so the pairs change every time.

  1. E1p11 Spinoza’s God is not a person above the world but reality itself, the one thing whose nature includes existing. There is nothing it would take for it not to be.
  2. E1p15 Everything that exists is a part of one whole, and is understood through it. Nothing stands outside the system of causes, including you.
  3. E1p17 Nature is not following orders. It acts from what it is, the way a triangle has its angles.
  4. E1p29 “Random” names what we have not yet understood, not a gap in the causes. Chance is a word for our ignorance.
  5. E1p33 The world could not have gone otherwise, given what it is. That is not a cage. It is the ground you can build on.
  6. E1p36 Every thing makes a difference. Nothing exists without producing effects, including the smallest act.
  7. E2p7 Thought and matter follow the same order. What happens in the body and what happens in the mind are one event, known two ways.
  8. E2p13 The mind is the idea of the body. You cannot think your way out of hunger, sleep or an adrenaline spike; you can understand them.
  9. E2p35 A false idea is not something added; it is something missing. Error is a true idea cut short.
  10. E2p38 What is common to all things, and equally in the part and the whole, cannot be misunderstood. That is where reliable knowledge starts.
  11. E2p41 Hearsay and fragments are the only source of error. Reasoning from what things share, and seeing them whole, cannot mislead.
  12. E2p43 Truth is its own standard, the way light shows both itself and the dark. Knowing why is how you know you know.
  13. E2p44 Reason sees things as necessary. Imagination sees them as could-have-been-otherwise, which is where regret lives.
  14. E2p48 There is no uncaused will. Every wish has a cause, which has a cause. This is not a loss of freedom; it is the map to it.
  15. E2p49 To have an idea is already to affirm something. Will is not a separate judge standing over our ideas.
  16. E3p2 Mind does not push body and body does not push mind. They are one thing seen two ways, so neither is the master.
  17. E3p6 Everything strives to go on being what it is. Spinoza calls this striving conatus, and it is the engine of the whole Ethics.
  18. E3p7 The striving is not something you have. It is what you are.
  19. E3p9 You strive to persist whether your ideas are clear or confused. The question is never whether you try, only how well you understand the trying.
  20. E3p11 What raises or lowers your body’s power raises or lowers your mind’s power, in step. Joy and sadness are these passages.
  21. E3p13 When something hurts, the mind reaches for anything that excludes it. That is why we distract ourselves, and why distraction never finishes the job.
  22. E3p15 Anything can become a cause of joy or pain by accident, just by being present when something else happened.
  23. E3p18 An image of the future or the past moves us as much as the present. Most anxiety is a present pain caused by an image.
  24. E3p27 We catch feelings from people like us, without deciding to. Moods spread by imitation.
  25. E3p32 Envy begins when we imagine a good only one person can have. Change the good and the envy has nothing to hold.
  26. E3p43 Hatred returned only grows. Love, or plain goodwill, is the one thing that can dissolve it.
  27. E3p49 We hate most what we imagine acted freely. See the causes behind someone and the hatred shrinks to its real size.
  28. E3p51 The same thing moves different people differently, and moves you differently on different days. Your reaction is information about you as much as about it.
  29. E3p53 Understanding your own power is itself a pleasure, and the clearer the understanding, the greater the joy.
  30. E3p55 Dwelling on your weakness is painful by nature, and the pain adds nothing to the understanding.
  31. E3p58 Not every emotion is something done to us. Joys and desires that come from understanding are ours in the full sense.
  32. E4p3 Your power to persist is finite and the world’s is not. That is not a reason for despair; it is the first honest fact of strategy.
  33. E4p4 You are a part of nature and cannot be anything else. You will be moved by things outside you, always.
  34. E4p7 A feeling is never defeated by a fact alone, only by a stronger feeling. Knowledge works when it becomes felt.
  35. E4p14 Knowing what is good does not by itself move you. The truth must become an affect to change anything.
  36. E4p18 Desire that comes from joy is stronger than desire that comes from pain. Building beats fleeing.
  37. E4p20 Virtue is power: the more you seek what truly helps you persist, the more virtue you have. Self-neglect is not a virtue.
  38. E4p24 Acting from virtue, living, and preserving yourself by reason are the same thing. Ethics is not a sacrifice of your interest; it is your interest understood.
  39. E4p35 People agree in nature only in so far as they live by reason. Passions divide; understanding joins.
  40. E4p37 The good a wise person wants for themselves, they want for others too. Understanding is a good that grows when shared.
  41. E4p41 Joy is good in itself; sadness is bad in itself. There is no merit in suffering.
  42. E4p42 Cheerfulness, a joy of the whole body, cannot be excessive. Some pleasures narrow you; this one widens you.
  43. E4p45 Hatred can never be good, however justified it feels. It binds your power to the thing you hate.
  44. E4p46 A person led by reason repays hatred with love or generosity. Not because the other deserves it, but because it frees you.
  45. E4p47 Hope and fear are two faces of doubt. Neither is good in itself, because both depend on not knowing.
  46. E4p50 Pity is pain, and pain is not needed to help. Reason helps without sinking.
  47. E4p52 Joy at understanding your own power, when it comes from reason, is the highest thing we can hope for.
  48. E4p54 Repentance makes you twice unhappy: once overcome by a bad desire, then again by pain. Understanding the causes does more.
  49. E4p63 Doing good out of fear is not living by reason. Fear can produce good behaviour, but not a free person.
  50. E4p66 Reason can choose a greater good later over a lesser good now. Patience is not denial; it is arithmetic.
  51. E4p67 A free person thinks of death least of all. Their wisdom is a meditation on life.
  52. E4p69 Declining a danger takes as much virtue as overcoming one. Courage is judgment, not bravado.
  53. E4p72 The free person never acts in bad faith. Deception trades long power for short advantage.
  54. E4p73 A person led by reason is freer under common law than alone. Freedom is built with others, not against them.
  55. E5p3 A passion stops being a passion the moment you form a clear idea of it. Understanding is the first remedy.
  56. E5p6 The more you see things as necessary, the less they can knock you over. Understanding is steadiness.
  57. E5p10 While no stronger passion is hitting you, you can arrange your thoughts in the order of understanding, and store rules for the hard moments.
  58. E5p15 To understand yourself and your emotions clearly is to love the whole of nature, and the love grows with the understanding.
  59. E5p23 Something of the mind is eternal: not a life after this one, but the part of us that understands, which is not a matter of time.
  60. E5p24 The more we understand particular things, the more we understand the whole. Close attention is a way to the infinite.
  61. E5p42 Blessedness is not a reward for being good. It is the good itself, and the joy of it is what gives us power over our passions.