SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REACTIONS
A LAW OF THOUGHT.--Whenever a tendency of thought has been vigorously
prosecuted for any length of time, a reaction invariably displays
itself. This rule is illustrated by the history of thought in the
seventeenth century. Mechanical categories, as we have seen, had been
steadily extending themselves for the better part of two centuries, and
with the materialism of Hobbes the process seemed fairly complete.
Meanwhile, however, human thought began to explore other avenues. Though
reaction from mechanical ways of thinking did not (at any rate, in the
circles with which we are concerned) take the form of an obscurantist
retreat into prejudice or superstition, the results of the new science
and its attendant mechanistic philosophy served as a base for further
explorations. The principles which Descartes and Hobbes had laid down
were criticised by being carried out to their logical conclusions.
SPINOZA.--The philosopher with whom we shall first concern ourselves was
a Jew of Spanish extraction, living in what was then the freest country
in Europe--Holland. Spinoza (1632-1677) was undoubtedly the greatest
thinker of his own age, which was highly fertile in that respect, and he
still stands as one of the most notable figures in the long history of
European thought. Not only is his outlook comprehensive, and his thought
many-sided, but his standpoint was "detached" to a degree hitherto
unknown. He was untainted, so far as a human being ever can be, by
"anthropomorphism"; he endeavoured to transcend the merely human
outlook. Here is always the dividing line between the great and the
merely mediocre thinker.
SPINOZA'S METHOD.--Spinoza's philosophical ancestry may be traced back
to Bruno, whose acquaintance we made in a previous chapter, but in whose
company we did not long remain. This highly original mind had already,
by the doctrine of the infinitude and the divinity of nature, shown how
the concept of God and the concept of nature might be closely bound up
together. By similar means, Spinoza hoped to indicate the reality of the
spiritual, without disturbing the mechanical world-conception which the
new science and new philosophy had created between them. He wished
somehow to find God not outside, but _in_ Nature; not in disturbances of
the order of Nature, but _in that order itself_.
THE TERM NATURE.--It would be a misapprehension to suppose that the
terms "God" and "Nature" are regarded by Spinoza as interchangeable,
though his numerous critics were accustomed to declare that this was the
case. On the contrary, Spinoza, in order to anticipate the
misunderstanding which he saw might arise on this point, reintroduced
into philosophy a pair of terms which the Scholastics had long before
brought into currency, but which had since fallen out of
fashion--_Natura naturans_ and _Natura naturata_. We might perhaps
translate the former of these, "Creative Nature," and the latter,
"Created Nature." _Natura naturans_ is equivalent to "Nature as a
creative power," or "The creative power immanent in Nature." _Natura
naturata_ is equivalent to "Nature as it is when created," or "The
results of the creative power immanent in Nature." And the _Natura
naturans_ is active in the _Natura naturata_ at all points: the creative
power is immanent in creation. As Spinoza puts it in one of his letters:
"I assert that God is (as it is called) the immanent, not the external
cause of all things. That is to say, I assert with Paul, that in
God all things live and move.... But if any one thinks that the
_Theologico-Political Treatise_ (one of his works) assumes that God
and Nature are one and the same, he is entirely mistaken."[8]
Thus, for Spinoza, the order of nature, which had seemed to so many of
his contemporaries, from the religious point of view, such a devastating
conception, as leaving no room for the spiritual, was itself only
explicable if interpreted spiritually.
"Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without
God" (_Ethics_ i. 15) sums up his attitude. All things may be, as the
new science taught, 'determined' but they are determined "by the
necessity of the divine nature" (_Ethics_ i. 29).
THE "ETHICS."--Spinoza may rightly be termed a man of one book. In his
_Ethics_ is to be found a complete and final expression of his
philosophy. "How boundless," says Goethe of this great book, "is the
disinterestedness conspicuous in every sentence, how exalted the
resignation which submits itself once for all to the great laws of
existence, instead of trying to get through life with the help of
trivial consolations; and what an atmosphere of peace breathes through
the whole!"
According to its teaching the true happiness and highest activity of men
is to be found in what Spinoza terms "the intellectual love of God." The
phrase seems to have been used to designate that full and clearer
knowledge which is aware that we ourselves and all the conditions of our
life are determined by the infinite Nature, by God Himself, who moves in
us as well as in all things acting upon us. The initiated no longer
regard themselves as single, isolated, impotent beings, but as included
in the divine nature. Themselves and all things are seen under the form
of eternity. This thought is, according to Spinoza, the fruit of the
highest activity of the human mind; this is the _amor intellectualis
dei_; and the supreme good for man.
His doctrine of immortality is bound up with this intellectual form of
religious mysticism--knowledge of God involves participation in His
immortality:
"Death is the less harmful the more the mind's knowledge is clear and
distinct, and the more the mind loves God.... The human mind may be of
such a nature that the part of it which we showed to perish with the
body may be of no moment to it in respect to what remains."
He who is "affected with love towards God" has a mind "of which the
greater part is eternal." Thus the soul achieves its emancipation by
identifying itself with God--who is the object of its knowledge and
love. The path is arduous, and the closing passage of the _Ethics_
admits this:
"If the road I have shown is very difficult, it can yet be discovered.
And clearly it must be very hard when it is so seldom found.... But all
excellent things are as difficult as they are rare."
SPINOZA AND RELIGION.--It is interesting to note that Spinoza, though a
"free-thinking" Jew, adopts towards the fundamental dogma of
Christianity an attitude which approximates to the classical expression
of it in the Fourth Gospel. He held that "God's eternal wisdom, which
reveals itself in all things, and especially in the human mind, has
given a special revelation of itself in Christ."
Perhaps his ethic, like that of the Stoics, with whom he had so much in
common, was better adapted to satisfy the needs of the philosopher than
of the ordinary man. But, in the seventeenth century, it was the
philosophers and learned men that were in need of a spiritual
interpretation of the universe; common men had theirs already, in the
traditional pietism which philosophers are often too ready to despise.
To Spinoza--and this is one of the many indications of the genuine
profundity of his thought--the simple believers seemed already to be in
possession of too much of the truth for it to be desirable or profitable
for them to indulge in speculation. To the question of his landlady at
the Hague as to whether she could be saved by the religion which she
professed, his reply was that her religion was good, that she should
seek no other, and that she would certainly be saved by it if she led a
quiet and pious life.
SPINOZA'S PERSONALITY.--The figure of Spinoza stands as one of the most
imposing and attractive in the whole history of philosophy, and his was
an unworldliness, a simplicity, and a humility purely Franciscan. Like
all Jews then, he knew a trade--that of lens grinding--and by this he
was able to live frugally, while he elaborated his thought. He dedicated
his life to the labour of quiet contemplation; nor was he ambitious of
recognition, which indeed generally came to him in the form of abuse. He
did not escape "the exquisite rancour of theological hatred," but it was
his belief, and the conviction inspired his life, that--
"Neither riches, nor sensuous enjoyment, nor honours, can be a true good
for man"; but on the contrary, "that the only thing which is able to
fill the mind with ever-new satisfaction is the striving after
knowledge, by means of which the mind is united with that which remains
constant while all else changes."
"The God-intoxicated," was the name given to Spinoza long afterwards in
Germany. He died (like St. Francis) at forty-five, worn out with the
toil of thought. And it renews one's faith in the perspicacity of
commonplace people to learn that his barber, sending in a bill after the
death of the philosopher, alluded to his late customer as "Mr. Spinoza
of blessed memory." It was left to a contemporary theologian to describe
him as "an unclean and foul atheist."
LEIBNIZ.--Spinoza had taken over from Descartes and Hobbes their
mechanical and determinist conception of nature, though he gave to it,
as we have seen, an interpretation of his own. His attitude was a blend
of that rationalism and mysticism which were characteristic of so much
seventeenth century thought. A far more complete reaction, however,
displays itself in the system of a contemporary of Spinoza's--Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716); who, when already a youth, had become an
enthusiastic devotee of the new science; the study of Kepler, Galileo
and Descartes caused him to feel as though "transported into a different
world." Though a German by birth, Leibniz lived continuously in France,
and wrote habitually in the language of that country.
CONTRAST TO SPINOZA.--Spinoza and Leibniz stand as examples of two
distinct methods of eluding the despotism of mechanics--methods which
will meet us again in the course of our survey. Spinoza accepts the
mechanical view as being inevitable and even desirable, but subjects it
to a spiritual interpretation--he regards it as the way in which the
_Natura naturans_ works.[9] Leibniz, on the other hand, viewed existence
from an entirely different standpoint. He was bold enough to reject the
mechanical view altogether; or rather he preferred to regard it as a
convenient abstraction, or a useful formula, which might reflect certain
aspects of reality, but could not do justice to its concrete richness
and complexity.
A PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALS.--Leibniz's criticism of Descartes and the
mechanical school proceeded along different lines from that of Spinoza,
who, as we have seen, accepted the mechanical view as the basis of his
speculation.
An axiom of that view was (as we know) the conservation of motion. For
this conservation of _motion_, Leibniz substitutes the conservation of
_force_ as being logically the more fundamental concept. True reality,
according to him, is not _motion_ itself, but the _force which is its
cause_. Force and existence became for him identical terms; to work and
to exist were the same. That force is the true reality, Leibniz
expressed in the language of his time by saying, "Force is substance,
and all substance is force"--a proposition which would not be repudiated
by modern science--and upon this statement his philosophy is built.
But it was not "force in general" or some "universal force" that was
regarded by him as the final reality: Leibniz was not a forerunner of
Herbert Spencer. Reality for him consisted in _individual centres of
force_--a multitude of individual and independent beings, each with its
own idiosyncrasy, and following its own lines. Existence was, in fact,
for him, _individual_. It was the _individual_ centres of force--not
_general_ principles, universal substances, laws or forces--that make up
reality.
DOCTRINE OF MONADS.--This view of reality was formulated by Leibniz in
his famous doctrine of "monads." "Monad" was the technical name applied
by him to those absolute individuals which he regarded as constituting
true reality. The word, meaning "unity," was simple and appropriate. And
he declared that the "monad," to be rightly understood, must be regarded
as analogous to our own souls. This principle of analogy was described
by Leibniz as _mon grand principe des choses naturelles_. Thus reality
was interpreted by him not in physical but in psychical terms, or if the
expression be preferred, in terms of personality.[10]
Of these "monads" there exist, according to this view, infinitely many
degrees. In fact all existence differs only in degree from our own.
Even between mind and matter there is only a quantitative and not a
qualitative gulf. For there are sleeping, dreaming, and more or less
waking monads; and matter is a form of unconscious mind; the monads
which compose material objects being "minds without memory," "momentary
minds."
Let Leibniz speak for himself:--
"Each portion of matter is not only infinitely divisible, but is also
actually subdivided without end.... Whence it appears that in the
smallest particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living
beings, animals, entelechies, souls. Each portion of matter may be
conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of
fishes.... Thus there is nothing fallow, nothing sterile, nothing dead
in the universe...."[11]
Leibniz may indeed be said to have been the first to outline a theory of
"panpsychism" (as it is termed), according to which there is nothing
that is not, in its degree, alive. As we shall have occasion to observe,
Leibniz was here (as elsewhere) a forerunner of much recent philosophy.
The significance of the Spinozist and Leibnizian systems of thought,
though regarding existence from such diverse standpoints, was, for
practical purposes the same. Both alike led out, though by different
paths, beyond the mechanical theory of the universe. They, indeed,
represent two types of thought which attempt to reach the same end by
different methods. Their counterparts will meet us again as this history
proceeds.
PASCAL.--But before passing out from the seventeenth century, one
thinker ought to detain us; for from more than one point of view he was
a notable personality, and of first-rate importance in the history of
religious, as distinct from purely philosophical thought. He was indeed
one of those figures who are distinguished among distinguished men of
all times.
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623, and was a boy of precocious mathematical
ability. By the age of twelve he is said to have worked out
independently most of the first and second books of Euclid; at sixteen
he wrote a treatise on Conics which attracted the attention of
Descartes; at nineteen he completed a calculating machine--a device that
had never been dreamt of before. At this point it is not surprising to
learn that his health broke down.
Pascal is not a systematic philosopher; but his acute intellect was
united to an inner restlessness of soul. Neither science nor philosophy
could bring him peace, for his needs were far deeper than any merely
rational systematisation of ideas could satisfy. Some have said of him
that he was fundamentally a sceptic, but one for whom religious faith
was essential; certainly in him were united an acute critical faculty
and an intense religious experience. Perhaps the two are not so
incompatible after all.
THE "PENSEES."--Pascal is chiefly famous for two works, the _Lettres
Provinciales_ and the _Pensees_. The former is controversial literature,
but yet a classic of the French language: in sum, it is an attack on the
Jesuits; but it need not here detain us, for with theology, as such, we
are not concerned, and still less with ecclesiastical systems. The
_Pensees_ is a collection of fragments, the material for an Apology for
Christianity which was never written. The autograph MS. preserved in
the _Bibliotheque Nationale_ at Paris "is made up of scraps of paper of
all shapes and sizes, written often on both sides ... and dealing with
all sorts of subjects." One is reminded of the mythical scraps of
manuscript from which the genius of Carlyle distilled the philosophy of
the sagacious Teufelsdroech.
But it is in these detached fragments that Pascal has expressed his
spiritual and intellectual struggles; they contain his philosophy of
life. And, however unsystematic in arrangement, they do reveal a fairly
definite temper and attitude of mind.
PASCAL'S PHILOSOPHY.--In the first place, the _Thoughts_ voice a
reaction against the "Cartesian intellectualism" which was then the
prevalent tendency in scientific and philosophical circles. "The last
attainment of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things
beyond it" might perhaps have been published by Pascal's predecessors.
"To laugh at philosophy is to be a true philosopher" would have seemed
like blasphemy or nonsense to most of his contemporaries, but it was
neither of these.
Behind sayings of this description lay the strong conviction that mere
logic was incapable of probing the depths of existence. "The heart has
its reasons of which reason knows nothing," is sound psychology, and not
scepticism or obscurantism. Of course it all depends what one means by
"reason." Too many of Pascal's contemporaries applied the word to a more
or less shallow rationalism utterly opposed to a spiritual view of
things, whereas reason properly understood is "the logic of the whole
personality."[12]
That Pascal was no mere narrow anti-rational obscurantist is evident,
not only from his own extraordinary insight, but from his continual
reiteration of his idea that the essential dignity of man lies in his
thought:
"All bodies, the firmament, the stars, the earth and its kingdoms, are
not worth the smallest mind, for a mind knows them, and itself, and
bodies know nothing."
Here lies the true greatness of man. In respect of material bulk he is
nothing, but his thought cannot be measured. "Man is only a reed, the
feeblest reed in nature, _but he is a thinking reed_." The saying has
become famous, and the words that follow are hardly less so; they remove
the overpowering and crushing incubus of man's illimitable material
environment, which, since Copernicus, had weighed upon thinkers like a
nightmare:
"Were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that
which slays him, because he knows that he dies, and the advantage that
the universe has over him: of this the universe knows nothing. Thus all
man's dignity lies in his thought."[13]
PASCAL'S PESSIMISM.--It has been said that an unbridgeable gulf lies
between those who believe and those who disbelieve in mankind. It is to
the latter category that Pascal belongs. His faith in the dignity of man
is paradoxically associated with a realisation of his weakness and
imbecility:
"What a chimera, then, is man! What an oddity, what a monster, what a
chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all
things, senseless earth-worm; depository of truth, cloaca of
uncertainty and error; the glory and the refuse of the universe."
"We desire truth, and find in ourselves only uncertainty; we seek
happiness, and find only misery and death. We are unable not to wish for
truth and happiness, and incapable either of certainty or felicity."
In fact, we may say that Pascal was the first, in an age of exaggerated
reverence for logic (the _damnosa hereditas_ of the Scholastic
theologians) to understand that the best arguments for religion are the
facts of human experience, and the conditions of human life.
"In vain, O men, do ye seek within yourselves the cure for your
troubles! All your knowledge can only teach you that it is not within
yourselves that ye find the true or good!" Here we have the language of
religious experience. The result of Augustine's meditation upon life was
the same: _Inquietum cor nostrum dum requiescat in te._ It is a tongue
that the "psychic man" can never understand; it seems to him
affectation; such language is foreign to the easy optimism of an age of
confidence. Indeed Pascal, though so intensely modern, is a stranger,
and his words often enigmas to our time.
_Vanitas vanitatum_ is thus the verdict that he passes upon human
experience. "The last act is tragic, however fine the comedy of all the
rest."
SIGNIFICANCE OF PASCAL.--It is not as a systematic thinker that Pascal
is of importance to the historian of thought. He typifies that more or
less inarticulate and unreasoned revolt which the arrogance and optimism
of a new science or a new philosophy arouse against themselves. He
voices the eternal protest that it is not by bread alone that men live.
As is generally the case with such protests, the pessimism of Pascal
was no doubt exaggerated; but exaggeration is necessary if minds are to
be impressed; and those who feel strongly see only one side of a
question.
RESULTS.--Thus in the three figures that have passed before us, we see a
threefold protest against that exclusion of the spiritual from the human
view of life. Spinoza, the pantheist, sees God everywhere;[14] Leibniz
finds in every recess of nature the principle of personality; Pascal
finds the only cure for human frailty and misery in religion.