AXIOMS.

1. All things that exist, exist either of themselves or in

virtue of something else.

2. What we cannot conceive of as existing in virtue of

something else, we must conceive through and in itself.

3. From a given cause an effect necessarily follows, and

if there be no given cause no effect can follow.

4. Things which have nothing in common with each other

cannot be understood through one another; i.e. the

conception of one does not involve the conception of the other.

5. To understand an effect implies that we understand

the cause of it.

6. A true idea is one which corresponds with its ideate.

7. The essence of anything which can be conceived as

non-existent does not involve existence.

Such is our metaphysical outfit of simple ideas with

which to start upon our enterprise of learning, the larger

number of which, so far from being simple, must be

absolutely without meaning to persons whose minds are

undisciplined in metaphysical abstraction, and which

become only intelligible propositions as we look back

upon them after having become acquainted with the

system which they are supposed to contain.

Although, however, we may justly quarrel with such

unlooked-for difficulties, the important question, after

all, is not of their obscurity but of their truth. Many

things in all the sciences are obscure to an unpractised

understanding, which are true enough and clear

enough to people acquainted with the subjects, and

may be fairly laid as foundations of a scientific system,

although rudimentary students must be contented to

accept them upon faith. Of course it is entirely

competent to Spinoza, or to any one, to define the terms

which he intends to use just as he pleases, provided

it be understood that any conclusions which he derives

out of them apply only to the ideas so defined, and not

to any supposed object existing which corresponds with

them. Euclid defines his triangles and circles, and

discovers that to figures so described certain properties

previously unknown may be proved to belong; but as

in nature there are no such things as triangles and

circles exactly answering the definition, his conclusions,

as applied to actually existing objects, are either not

true at all or only proximately so. Whether it be

possible to bridge over the gulf between existing things

and the abstract conception of them, as Spinoza attempts

to do, we shall presently see. It is a royal road to

certainty if it be a practicable one, but we cannot say

that we ever met any one who could say honestly

Spinoza had convinced him; and power of demonstration,

like all other powers, can be judged only

by its effects. Does it prove? does it produce conviction?

If not, it is nothing. We need not detain

our readers among these abstractions. The real power

of Spinozism does not lie so remote from ordinary

appreciation, or we should long ago have heard the last

of it. Like all other systems which have attracted

followers, it addresses itself not to the logical intellect

but to the imagination, which it affects to set aside.

We refuse to submit to the demonstrations by which

it thrusts itself upon our reception, but regarding it

as a whole, as an attempt to explain the nature of the

world, of which we are a part, we can still ask ourselves

how far the attempt is successful. Some account of

these things we know that there must be, and the

curiosity which asks the question regards itself, of

course, as competent in some degree to judge of the

answer to it. Before proceeding, however, to regard

this philosophy in the aspect in which it is really

powerful, we must clear our way through the fallacy

of the method.

The system is evolved in a series of theorems in

severely demonstrative order out of the definitions and

axioms which we have translated. To propositions 1--6

we have nothing to object; they will not, probably,

convey any very clear ideas, but they are so far purely

abstract, and seem to follow (as far as we can speak

of "following," in such subjects), by fair reasoning.

"Substance is prior in nature to its affections."

"Substances with different attributes have nothing in

common," and therefore "one cannot be the cause of the

other." "Things really distinct are distinguished by

difference either of attribute or mode (there being

nothing else by which they can be distinguished), and

therefore, because things modally distinguished do not

qua substance differ from one another, there cannot be

more than one substance of the same attribute; and

therefore (let us remind our readers that we are among

what Spinoza calls notiones simplicissimas), since there

cannot be two substances of the same attribute and

substances of different attributes cannot be the cause

one of the other, it follows that no substances can be

produced by another substance."

The existence of substance, he then concludes, is

involved in the nature of the thing itself. Substance

exists. It does and must. We ask, why? and we

are answered, because there is nothing capable of

producing it, and therefore it is self-caused; i.e. by

the first definition the essence of it implies existence

as part of the idea. It is astonishing that Spinoza

should not have seen that he assumes the fact that

substance does exist in order to prove that it must. If

it cannot be produced and exists, then, of course, it

exists in virtue of its own nature. But supposing it

does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof

falls to pieces, unless we fall back on the facts of

experience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that

the thing which we call the world, and the personalities

which we call ourselves, are a real substantial

something. Conscious of the infirmity of his demonstration,

he winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof,

but never escaping the same vicious circle: substance

exists because it exists, and the ultimate experience of

existence, so far from being of that clear kind which

can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all

our sensations. What is existence? and what is that

something which we say exists? Things--essences--

existences; these are but the vague names with which

faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional

phenomena, disguise their incapacity. The world

in the Hindoo legend rested upon the back of the

tortoise. It was a step between the world and nothingness,

and served to cheat the imagination with ideas

of a fictitious resting-place.

"If any one affirms," says Spinoza, "that he has a clear,

distinct--that is to say, a true idea of substance, but that

nevertheless he is uncertain whether any such substance

exist, it is the same as if he were to affirm that he had a

true idea, but yet was uncertain whether it was not false.

Or if he says that substance can be created, it is like saying

that a false idea can become a true idea--as absurd a thing

as it is possible to conceive; and therefore the existence

of substance, as well as the essence of it, must be

acknowledged as an eternal verity."

It is again the same story. He speaks of a clear idea

of substance; but he has not proved that such an idea

is within the compass of the mind. A man's own

notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he really

sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in

itself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately with

the object of it. No doubt a man who professes to

have an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannot

doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists.

It is merely to say that as long as a man is certain of

this or that fact, he has no doubt of it. But neither

his certainty nor Spinoza's will be of any use to a man

who has no such idea, and who cannot recognize the

lawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at.

From the self-existing substance it is a short step to

the existence of God. After a few more propositions

following one another with the same kind of coherence,

we arrive successively at the conclusions that there is

but one substance, that this substance being necessarily

existent, it is also infinite, and that it is therefore

identical with the Being who had been previously defined

as the "Ens absolute perfectum," consisting of infinite

"attributes, each of which expresses His eternal and

infinite essence." Demonstrations of this kind were the

characteristics of the period. Des Cartes had set the

example of constructing them, and was followed by

Cudworth, Clerke, Berkeley, and many others besides

Spinoza. The inconclusiveness of their reasoning may

perhaps be observed most readily in the strangely

opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of the

nature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless

agreed, by the same method, to gather each out of their

ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully,

for it is the very key-stone of the Pantheistic system.

As stated by Des Cartes, the argument stands something

as follows:--God is an all-perfect Being,--perfection

is the idea which we form of him: existence is

a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The

sophism we are told is only apparent; existence is

part of the idea; it is as much involved in it, as the

equality of all lines drawn from the centre to the

circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle,

and a non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable

as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered

that in this way we may prove the existence of anything,

--Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian Gods; we have

but to define them as existing, and the proof is

complete. But in this objection there is really nothing of

weight; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutely

perfect, and, therefore, of their existence we can

conclude nothing. With greater justice, however, we

may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence

we know too little to speculate in this way. Existence

may be an imperfection for all we can tell; we know

nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless

petilianes principii, like the self-devouring serpent

resolving themselves into nothing. We wander round

and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible

point at which we can seize their meaning; but we

are presented everywhere with the same impracticable

surface, from which our grasp glides off ineffectual.

The idea, however, lying at the bottom of the conviction,

which obviously Spinoza felt upon the matter,

is stated with sufficient distinctness in one of his letters.

"Nothing is more clear," he writes to his pupil De

Vries, "than that, on the one hand, everything which

exists is conceived by or under some attribute or other;

that the more reality, therefore, a being or thing has,

the more attributes must be assigned to it;" "and

conversely," (and this he calls his argumentum palmarium

in proof of the existence of God,) "the more

attributes I assign to a thing, the more I am forced to

conceive it as existing." Arrange the argument how we

please, we shall never get it into a form clearer than

this:--The more perfect a thing is, the more it must

exist (as if existence could admit of more or less); and

therefore the all-perfect Being must exist absolutely.

There is no flaw, we are told, in the reasoning; and if

we are not convinced, it is solely from the confused

habits of our own minds.

It may seem to some persons that all arguments are

good when on the right side, and that it is a gratuitous

impertinence to quarrel with the proofs of a conclusion

which it is so desirable that all should receive. As yet,

however, we are but inadequately acquainted with the

idea attached by Spinoza to the word perfection, and

if we commit ourselves to this logic, it may lead us out

to some unexpected consequences. Obviously all such

reasonings presume, as a first condition, that we men

possess faculties capable of dealing with absolute ideas;

that we can understand the nature of things external

to ourselves as they really are in their absolute relation

to one another, independent of our own conception.

The question immediately before us is one which can

never be determined. The truth which is to be proved

is one which we already believe; and if, as we believe

also, our conviction of God's existence is, like that of

our own existence, intuitive and immediate, the grounds

of it can never adequately be analysed; we cannot say

exactly what they are, and therefore we cannot say

what they are not; whatever we receive intuitively, we

receive without proof; and stated as a naked proposition,

it must involve necessarily a petitio principii. We

have a right, however, to object at once to an

argument in which the conclusion is more obvious than the

premises; and if it lead on to other consequences

which we disapprove in themselves, we reject it without

difficulty or hesitation. We ourselves believe that God

is, because we experience the control of a "power"

which is stronger than we; and our instincts teach us

so much of the nature of that power as our own

relation to it requires us to know. God is the being to

whom our obedience is due; and the perfections which

we attribute to Him are those moral perfections which

are the proper object of our reverence. Strange to say,

the perfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear to

him, are without any moral character whatever; and

for men to speak of the justice of God, he tells us, is

but to see in Him a reflection of themselves: as if a

triangle were to conceive of Him as eminenter triangularis,

or a circle to give Him the property of circularity.

Having arrived, however, at existence, we soon find

ourselves among ideas, which at least are intelligible, if

the character of them is as far removed as before from

the circle of ordinary thought. Nothing exists except

substance, the attributes under which substance is ex

expressed, and the modes or affections of those attributes.

There is but one substance self-existent, eternal, necessary,

and that is the absolutely Infinite all-perfect Being.

Substance cannot produce substance; and, therefore,

there is no such thing as creation, and everything which

exists, is either an attribute of Him, or an affection of

some attribute of Him, modified in this manner or in

that. Beyond Him there is nothing, and nothing like

Him or equal to Him; He therefore alone in Himself

is absolutely free, uninfiuenced by anything, for nothing

is except Himself; and from Him and from His supreme

power, essence, intelligence (for all these words mean the

same thing) all things have necessarily flowed, and will

and must flow on for ever, in the same manner as from

the nature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, and

will follow from eternity to eternity, that the angles of it

are equal to two right angles. It would seem as if the

analogy were but an artificial play upon words, and that

it was only metaphorically that in mathematical demonstration

we speak of one thing as following from another.

The properties of a curve or a triangle are what they are

at all times, and the sequence is merely in the order in

which they are successively known to ourselves. But

according to Spinoza, this is the only true sequence;

and what we call the universe, and all the series of

incidents upon it, are involved formally and mathematically

in the definition of God.

Each attribute is infinite suo genere; and it is time

that we should know distinctly the meaning which

Spinoza attaches to that important word. Out of the

infinite number of the attributes of God two only are

known to us--"extension," and "thought," or "mind."

Duration, even though it be without beginning or end,

is not an attribute; it is not even a real thing. It has

no relation to being conceived mathematically, in the

same way as it would be absurd to speak of circles or

triangles as any older to-day than they were at the

beginning of the world. These and everything of the

same kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, sub

quadam specie aeternitatis. But extension, or substance

extended, and thought, or substance perceiving, are real,

absolute, and objective. We must not confound extension

with body, for though body be a mode of extension,

there is extension which is not body, and it is infinite

because we cannot conceive it to be limited except

by itself---or, in other words, to be limited at all. And

as it is with extension, so it is with mind, which is also

infinite with the infinity of its object. Thus there is no

such thing as creation, and no beginning or end. All

things of which our faculties are cognizant under one or

other of these attributes are produced from God, and in

Him they have their being, and without Him they would

cease to be.

Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration in this

strange logic, (and most admirably indeed is the form of

the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it,) we learn that

God is the only causa libera; that no other thing or

being has any power of self-determination: all move by

fixed laws of causation, motive upon motive, act upon

act; there is no free will, and no contingency; and

however necessary it may be for our incapacity to consider

future things as in a sense contingent (see Tractat.

Theol. Polit. cap. iv. sec. 4), this is but one of the

thousand convenient deceptions which we are obliged

to employ with ourselves. God is the causa immanens

omnium; He is not a personal being existing apart from

the universe; but Himself in His own reality, He is

expressed in the universe, which is His living garment.

Keeping to the philosophical language of the term,

Spinoza preserves the distinction between natura

nalurans and natura naturala. The first is being in

itself, the attributes of substance as they are conceived

simply and alone; the second is the infinite series of

modifications which follow out of the properties of these

attributes. And thus all which is, is what it is by an

absolute necessity, and could not have been other than

it is. God is free, because no causes external to

Himself have power over Him; and as good men are

most free when most a law to themselves, so it is no

infringement on God's freedom to say that He must have

acted as He has acted, but rather He is absolutely free

because absolutely a law Himself to Himself.

Here ends the first book of the Ethics, the book

which contains, as we said, the nolianes simplicissimas,

and the primary and rudimental deductions from them.

his Dei naturam, Spinoza says in his lofty confidence,

ejusque proprietates explicui. But as if conscious that

his method will never convince, he concludes this portion

of his subject with an analytical appendix; not to explain

or apologize, but to show us clearly, in practical detail,

the position into which he has led us. The root, we are

told, of all philosophical errors, lies in our notion of final

causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpret

God's action through our own; we speak of His intentions,

as if he were a man; we assume that we are

capable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves,

and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of

all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the

universe be what this philosophy has described it, the

perfection which it assigns to God is extended to

everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no

shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person

and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be,

and nothing more. But men imagining that all things

exist on their account, and perceiving their own interests,

bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously affected,

have conceived these opposite influences to result from

opposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributes

to their advantage good, and whatever obstructs

it evil. For our convenience we form generic conceptions

of human excellence, as archetypes after which to

strive, and such of us as approach nearest to such

archetypes are supposed to be virtuous, and those who

are most remote from them to be wicked. But such

generic abstractions are but entia imaginationis, and

have no real existence. In the eyes of God each thing

is what it has the means of being. There is no rebellion

against Him, and no resistance of His will; in truth,

therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thing as a

bad action in the common sense of the word. Actions

are good or bad, not in themselves, but as compared

with the nature of the agent; what we censure in men,

we tolerate and even admire in animals, and as soon as

we are aware of our mistake in assigning to the former

a power of free volition, our notion of evil as a positive

thing will cease to exist.

"If I am asked," concludes Spinoza, "why then all mankind

were not created by God, so as to be governed solely

by reason? it was because, I reply, there was to Him no

lack of matter to create all things from the highest to the

lowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly,

because the laws of His nature were ample enough to

suffice for the production of all things which can be conceived

by an Infinite Intelligence."

It is possible that readers who have followed us so far

will now turn away with no disposition to learn more

philosophy which issues in such conclusions; and

resentful perhaps that it should have been ever laid

before them at all, in language so little expressive of

aversion and displeasure. We must claim however, in

Spinoza's name, the right which he claims for himself.

His system must be judged as a whole; and whatever we

may think ourselves would be the moral effect of it if it

were generally received, in his hands and in his heart it

is worked into maxims of the purest and loftiest morality.

And at least we are bound to remember that some

account of this great mystery of evil there must be; and

although familiarity with commonly-received explanations

may disguise from us the difficulties with which they too,

as well as that of Spinoza, are embarrassed, such difficulties

none the less exist; the fact is the grand perplexity,

and for ourselves we acknowledge that of all theories

about it Spinoza's would appear to us the least irrational,

if our conscience did not forbid us to listen to it. The

objections, with the replies to them, are well drawn out

in the correspondence with William de Blyenburg; and

it will be seen from this with how little justice the denial

of evil as a positive thing can be called equivalent to

denying it relatively to man, or to confusing the moral

distinctions between virtue and vice.

"We speak," writes Spinoza, in answer to Blyenburg,

who had urged something of the kind, "we speak of this

or that man having done a wrong thing, when we compare

him with a general standard of humanity; but inasmuch

as God neither perceives things in such abstract manner,

nor forms to himself such kind of generic definitions, and

since there is no more reality in anything than God has

assigned to it, it follows, surely, that the absence of good

exists only in respect of man's understanding, not in respect

of God's."

"If this be so," then replies Blyenburg, "bad men fulfil

God's will as well as good."

"It is true," Spinoza answers, "they fulfil it, yet not as the

good nor as well as the good, nor are they to be compared

with them. The better a thing or a person be, the more

there is in him of God's spirit, and the more he expresses

God's will; while the bad, being without that divine love

which arises from the knowledge of God, and through which

alone we are called (in respect of our understandings) his

servants, are but as instruments in the hand of the artificer,

--they serve unconsciously, and are consumed in their

service."

Spinoza, after all, is but stating in philosophical

language the extreme doctrine of Grace: and St. Paul,

if we interpret his real belief by the one passage so

often quoted, in which he compares us to "clay in the

hands of the potter, who maketh one vessel to honour

and another to dishonour," may be accused with justice

of having held the same opinion. If Calvinism be

pressed to its logical consequences, it either becomes

an intolerable falsehood, or it resolves itself into the

philosophy of Spinoza. It is monstrous to call evil

a positive thing, and to assert that God has

predetermined it,--to tell us that he has ordained what

he hates, and hates what he has ordained. It is

incredible that we should be without power to obey

him except through his free grace, and yet be held

responsible for our failures when that grace has been

withheld. And it is idle to call a philosopher

sacrilegious who has but systematized the faith which so

many believe, and cleared it of its most hideous features.

At all events, Spinoza flinches from nothing, and disguises

no conclusions either from himself or from

his readers. We believe that logic has no business with

such questions; that the answer to them

lies in the conscience and not in the intellect,--that

it is practical merely, and not speculative. Spinoza

thinks otherwise; and he is at least true to the

guide which he has chosen. Blyenburg presses him

with instances of horrid crime, such as bring home

to the heart the natural horror of it. He speaks of

Nero's murder of Agrippina, and asks if God can

be called the cause of such an act as that.

"God," replies Spinoza, calmly, "is the cause of all things

which have reality. If you can show that evil, errors,

crimes express any real things, I agree readily that God is

the cause of them; but I conceive myself to have proved

that what constitutes the essence of evil is not a real thing

at all, and therefore that God cannot be the cause of it.

Nero's matricide was not a crime, in so far as it was a

positive outward act. Orestes also killed his mother; and we

do not judge Orestes as we judge Nero. The crime of the

latter lay in his being without pity, without obedience,

without natural affection,--none of which things express any

positive essence, but the absence of it: and therefore God

was not the cause of these, although he was the cause of

the act and the intention.

"But once for all," he adds, "this aspect of things will

remain intolerable and unintelligible as long as the common

notions of free will remain unimproved."

And of course, and we shall all confess it, if these

notions are as false as he supposes them, and we have

no power to be anything but what we are, there neither

is nor can be such a thing as moral evil; and what we

call crimes will no more involve a violation of the will

of God, they will no more impair his moral attributes

if we suppose him to have willed them, than the same

actions, whether of lust, ferocity, or cruelty, in the

inferior animals. There will be but, as Spinoza says,

an infinite gradation in created things, the poorest life

being more than none, the meanest active disposition

something better than inertia, and the smallest exercise

of reason better than mere ferocity. Moral evil need

not disturb us, if--if we can be nothing but what we are,

if we are but as clay.

The moral aspect of the matter will be more clear

as we proceed. We pause, however, to notice one

difficulty of a metaphysical kind, which is best disposed

of in passing. Whatever obscurity may lie about the

thing which we call Time (philosophers not being able

to agree what it is, or whether properly it is anything),

the words past, present, future do undoubtedly convey

some definite idea with them: things will be which

are not yet, and have been which are no longer. Now

if everything which exists be a necessary mathematical

consequence from the nature or definition of the One

Being, we cannot see how there can be any time but

the present, or how past and future have room for a

meaning. God is, and therefore all properties of him

are, just as every property of a circle exists in it as

soon as the circle exists. We may if we like, for

convenience, throw our theorems into the future, and say,

e.g. that if two lines in a circle cut each other, the

rectangle under the parts of the one will equal that

under the parts of the other. But we only mean in

reality that these rectangles are equal; and the future

relates only to our knowledge of the fact. Allowing,

however, as much as we please, that the condition of

England a hundred years hence lies already in embryo

in existing causes, it is a paradox to say that such

condition exists already in the sense in which the properties

of the circle exist; and yet Spinoza insists on

the illustration.

It is singular that he should not have noticed the

difficulty; not that either it or the answer to it (which

no doubt would have been ready enough) are likely to

interest any person except metaphysicians, a class of

thinkers, happily, which is rapidly diminishing.

We proceed to more important matters--to Spinoza's

detailed theory of Nature chiefly as exhibited in man

and in man's mind, a theory which for its bold ingenuity

is the most remarkable which on this dark subject has

ever been proposed. Whether we can believe it or

not, is another question; yet undoubtedly it provides

an answer for every difficulty; it accepts with equal

welcome the extremes of materialism and of spiritualism:

and if it be the test of the soundness of a philosophy

that it will explain phenomena and reconcile difficulties,

it is hard to account for the fact that a system

which bears such a test so admirably, should nevertheless

be so incredible as it is.

Most people have heard of the "Harmonie Pre-etablie"

of Leibnitz; it is borrowed without acknowledgment

from Spinoza, and adapted to the Leibnitzian

system. "Man," says Leibnitz, "is composed of mind

and body; but what is mind and what is body, and

what is the nature of their union? Substances so

opposite in kind, it is impossible to suppose can affect

one another; mind cannot act on matter, or matter upon

mind; and the appearance of such mutual action of

them on each other is an appearance only and a delusion."

A delusion so general, however, required to be accounted

for; and Leibnitz accounted for it by supposing that God

in creating a world, composed of material and spiritual

phenomena, ordained from the beginning that these

several phenomena should proceed in parallel lines side

by side in a constantly corresponding harmony. The sense

of seeing results, it appears to us, from the formation of

a picture upon the retina. The motion of the arm or

the leg appears to result from an act of will; but in either

case we mistake coincidence for causation. Between

substances so wholly alien there can be no intercommunion;

and we only suppose that the object seen

produces the idea, and that the desire produces the

movement, because the phenomena of matter and the

phenomena of spirit are so contrived as to flow always

in the same order and sequence. This hypothesis, as

coming from Leibnitz, has been, if not accepted, at

least listened to respectfully; because while taking it

out of its proper place, he contrived to graft it upon

Christianity; and succeeded, with a sort of speculative

legerdemain, in making it appear to be in harmony with

revealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination,

and connected with the Christian doctrine

of Retribution, it steps forward with an air of unconscious

innocence, as if interfering with nothing

which Christians generally believe. And yet, leaving

as it does no larger scope for liberty or responsibility

than when in the hands of Spinoza,* Leibnitz, in our

opinion, has only succeeded in making it infinitely more

revolting. Spinoza could not regard the bad man as

an object of Divine anger and a subject of retributory

punishment. He was not a Christian, and made no

pretension to be considered such; and it did not occur

to him to regard the actions of a being which, both

with Leibnitz and himself, is (to use his own expression)

an automaton spirituale, as deserving a fiery indignation

and everlasting vengeance.

____

* Since these words were written a book [Refutation lnedite

de Spinoza. Par Leibnitz. Precedee d'une Memoire,

par Foucher de Carell. Paris. 1854.] has appeared in Paris

by an able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead

us to modify the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give

our reasons for speaking as we do. M. de Careil has discovered

in the library at Hanover a MS. in the handwriting of Leibnitz,

containing a series of remarks on the book of a certain John

Wachter. It does not appear who this John Wachter was, nor

by what accident he came to have so distinguished a critic. If we

may judge by the extracts at present before us, he seems to have

been an absurd and extravagant person, who had attempted to

combine the theology of the Cabbala with the very little which

he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza; and, as

far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections upon

them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance of

Spinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an

opportunity of noticing the points on which he most disapproved of

Spinoza himself; and these few notices M. de Caroil has now

for the first time published as "The Refutation of Spinoza. by

Leibnitz." They are exceedingly brief and scanty; and the writer

of them would assuredly have hesitated to describe an imperfect

criticism by so ambitious a title. The modern editor, however,

must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and we will not

quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his master

had accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what

is at least a curious discovery, and we will not qualify the gratitude

which he has earned by industry and good will. At the same

time, the notes themselves confirm the opinion which we have

always entertained, that Leibnitz did not understand Spinoza.

Leibnitz did not understand him, and the followers of Leibnitz

do not understand him now. If he were no more than what he

is described in the book before us.--if his metaphysics were

"miserable," if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothing

more than a second-rate disciple of Descartes,--we can assure

M. de Caroil that we should long ago have heard the last of him.

There must be something else, something very different from

this, to explain the position which he holds in Germany, or the

fascination which his writings exerted over such minds as those

of Lessing or of Goethe; and the fact of so enduring an influence is

more than a sufficient answer to mere depreciating criticism. This.

however, is not a point which there is any use in pressing. Our

present business is to justify the two assertions which we have

made. First, that Leibnitz conceived his "Theory of the Harmonic

Pre-etablie" from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and,

secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion as

is that of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its real

character.

First for the "Harmonic Pre-etablie." Spinoza's "Ethics"

appeared in 1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz.

In 1696, Leibnitz announced as a discovery of his own, a Theory

of "The Communication of Substances," which he illustrates in

the following manner:--

"Vous ne comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouver

ce que j'ai ovance touchant la communication, ou l'harmonie de

deux suhstances aussi differentes que l'ame et le corps? Il est

vrai que je crois en avoir trouve le moyen; et voici comment je

pretends vous satisfaire. Figurez-vous deux horologes ou montres

qui s'accordent parfaitement. Or cela se pent faire de trots

manieres. La 1^0 consiste dans une influence mutuelle. La 2^0 est

d'y artocher un ouvrier hobile qui les redresse, et lea mette d'accord

a tous moments. La 3^0 eat de fabriquer ces deux pendules avec taut

d'art et de justesse, qu'on se puisse assurer de leur accord dana

la suite. Menez maintenant l'ame et le corps a la place de ces

deux pendules; leur accord pent arriver par l'une de ces trois

manieres. La voye d'influence eat celle de la philosophic vulgaire;

mais comme l'on ne sauroit concevoir des particules materielles

qui putssent passer d'une de ces substances dana l'autre, il faut

abandonner ce sentiment. La voye de l'assistance continuelle du

Createur est celle du systeme des causes occasionnelles; mais je

tiens que c'est fake intervenir Deus ex machina dans une chose

naturelle et ordinaire, ou selon la raison il ne doit concourir, que

de la maniere qu'il concourt a toutes les autres choses naturelles.

Ainsi il ne reste que mon hypothese; c'est-a-dire que la voye de

l'harmonie. Dieu a fait des le commencement chacune de ces

deux substances de telle nature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propres

loix qu'elle a recues avec son etre, elle s'accorde pourtant avec

l'autre tout comme s'il y avoit une influence mutuelle, ou comme

si Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au de-la de son coneours general.

Apres cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver a moins qu'on ne

veuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est assez habile pout se servir

de cette artifice," &c.--leibnitz Opera, p. 133. Berlin edition,

1840.

Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system with

Christianity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation of

mind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatment

from what it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza and

Leibnitz both agree in this one peculiar conception in which they differ

from all other philosophers before or after them--that mind and

body have no direct communication with each other, and that the

phenomena of them merely correspond. M. de Carell says they

both borrowed it from Descartes; but that is impossible. Descartes

held no such opinion, it was the precise point of disagreement at

which Spinoza parted from him: and therefore, since in point of

date Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and we know that

Leibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must either suppose

that he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation which

he ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely

improbable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards

reoriginated for himself one of the most singular and peculiar

notions which was ever offered to the belief of mankind.

So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of little

moment. It is more important to ascertain whether, in the hands

of Leibnitz, this theory can be any better reconciled with what is

commonly meant by religion; whether, that is, the ideas of

obedience and disobedience, merit and demerit, judgment and retribution,

have any proper place under it. Spinoza makes no pretension to

anything of the kind, and openly declares that these ideas are

ideas merely, and human mistakes. Leibnitz, in opposition to

him, endeavours to re-establish them in the following manner. It

is true he conceives that the system of the universe has been

arranged and predetermined from the moment at which it was

launched into being; from the moment at which God selected it,

with all its details, as the best which could exist; but it is

carried on by the action of individual creatures (monads as he calls

them) which, though necessarily obeying the laws of their existence.

yet obey them with a "character of spontaneity," which although

"automata," are yet voluntary agents; and therefore, by the

consent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moral

praise or moral censure. The question is, whether by the mere

co-existence of these opposite qualifies in the

monad man, he has proved that such qualities can coexist. In

our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or of a

quadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these matters from

which no philosophy can extricate itself. If man can incur guilt,

their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot act

otherwise than they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least it

appears to us; yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would

not complain merely of a theory, and if our earthly life were all

in all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopes

and fears, the "Harmonic Pre-etablie," might be tolerated as

credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is when

forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has no

natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The

world may be in the main good; while the good, from the

unknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without some

intermixture of evil; and although Leibnitz was at times staggered

even himself by the misery and wickedness which he witnessed,

and was driven to comfort himself with the reflection that this

earth might be but one world in the midst of the universe, and

perhaps the single chequered exception in an infinity of stainless

globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because it was

imperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark subject,

when nothing better than conjecture was attainable.

But as soon as we are told that the evil in these "automata"

of mankind, being, as it is, a necessary condition of this world

which God has called into being, is yet infinitely detestable to

God; that the creatures who suffer under the accursed necessity

of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God's eyes, for doing

what they have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justly

punished in everlasting fire; our hearts recoil against the paradox.

No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had found

this belief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of the

popular creed, such a doctrine would have formed a natural appendage

of his system; and if M. de Careil desires to know why the

influence of Spinoza, whose genius he considers so insignificant,

has been so deep and so enduring, while Leibnitz has only secured

for himself a mere admiration of his talents, it is because Spinoza

was not afraid to be consistent, even at the price of the world's

reprobation, and refused to purchase the applause of his own age

at the sacrifice of the singleness of his heart.

____

"Deus," according to Spinoza's definition, "est ens

constans infinitis attributis quorum unumquodque aeternam et

infinitam essentiam exprimit." Under each of these attributes

infinita sequuntur, and everything which an infinite intelligence

can conceive, and an infinite power can produce,--everything

which follows as a possibility out of the divine nature,--all

things which have been, and are, and will be,--find expression

and actual existence, not under one attribute only,

but under each and every attribute. Language is so

ill adapted to such a system, that even to state

it accurately is all but impossible, and analogies can

only remotely suggest what such expressions mean.

But it is as if it were said that the same thought might

be expressed in an infinite variety of languages; and

not in words only, but in action, in painting, in sculpture,

in music, in any form of any kind which can be

employed as a means of spiritual embodiment. Of all

these infinite attributes two only, as we said, are known

to us,--extension and thought. Material phenomena

are phenomena of extension; and to every modification

of extension an idea corresponds under the attribute of

thought. Out of such a compound as this is formed

man, composed of body and mind; two parallel and

correspondent modifications eternally answering one

another. And not man only, but all other beings and

things are similarly formed and similarly animated;

the anima or mind of each varying according to the

complicity of the organism of its material counterpart.

Although body does not think, nor affect the mind's

power of thinking; and mind does not control body,

nor communicate to it either motion or rest or any influence

from itself, yet body with all its properties is the

object or ideate of mind; whatsoever body does mind

perceives, and the greater the energizing power of the

first, the greater the perceiving power of the second.

And this is not because they are adapted one to the

other by some inconceivable preordinating power, but

because mind and body are una et eatlent res, the one

absolute being affected in one and the same manner,

but expressed under several attributes; the modes and

affections of each attribute having that being for their

cause, as he exists under that attribute of which they

are modes and no other; idea being caused by idea,

and body affected by body; the image on the retina

being produced by the object reflected upon it, the idea

or image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c. &c.

A solution so remote from all ordinary ways of

thinking on these matters is so difficult to grasp, that

one can hardly speak of it as being probable, or as

being improbable. Probability extends only to what

we can imagine as possible, and Spinoza's theory seems

to lie beyond the range within which our judgment can

exercise itself; in our own opinion, indeed, as we have

already said, the entire subject is one with which we

have no business; and the explanation of it, if it is

ever to be explained to us, is reserved till we are in

some other state of existence. We do not disbelieve

Spinoza because what he suggests is in itself incredible.

The chances may be millions to one against his being

right, yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probably

at least as strange as his conception of it. But we are

firmly convinced that of these questions, and all like

them, practical answers only lie within the reach of

human faculties; and that in all such "researches into

the absolute" we are on the road which ends nowhere.

Among the difficulties, however, most properly akin

to this philosophy itself, there is one most obvious, viz.,

that if the attributes of God be infinite, and each

particular thing is expressed under them all, then mind

and body express but an infinitesimal portion of the

nature of each of ourselves; and this human nature

exists (i.e., there exists corresponding modes of substance)

in the whole infinity of the divine nature under

attributes differing each from each, and all from mind

and all from body. That this must be so, follows

obviously from the definition of the Infinite Being, and

the nature of the distinction between the two attributes

which are known to us; and if this be so, why does

not the mind perceive something of all these other

attributes? The objection is well expressed by a

correspondent (Letter 67):--"It follows from what you

say," he writes to Spinoza, "that the modification which

constitutes my mind, and that which constitutes my

body, although it be one and the same modification, yet

must be expressed in an infinity of ways; one way by

thought, a second way by extension, a third by some

attribute unknown to me, and so on to infinity; the

attributes being infinite in number, and the order and

connection of modes being the same in them all; why,

then, does the mind perceive the modes of but one

attribute only?"

Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily a fragment

of his letter only is extant, so that it is too brief to be

satisfactory.

"In reply to your difficulty," he says, "although each

particular thing be truly in the Infinite mind, conceived

in Infinite modes, the Infinite idea answering to all

these cannot constitute one and the same mind of any

single being, but must constitute Infinite minds. No

one of all these Infinite ideas has any connection with

another."

He means, we suppose, that God's mind only perceives,

or can perceive, things under their Infinite expression,

and that the idea of each several mode, under

whatever attribute, constitutes a separate mind.

We do not know that we can add anything to this

explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep

of the speculation itself; we will however attempt an

illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate

obscurum tier obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of

the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the

attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and

D other attributes, the nature of which is not known

to us. Now A, as the attribute of mind, is that which

perceives all which takes place under B C and D, but it

is only as it exists in God that it forms the universal

consciousness of an attributes at once. In its modifications

it is combined separately with the modifications of

each, constituting in combination with the modes of

each attribute a separate being. As forming the mind

of B, A perceives what takes place in B, but not what

takes place in C or D. Combined with B, it forms the

soul of the human body, and generally the soul of all

modifications of extended substance; combined with C,

it forms the soul of some other analogous being;

combined with D, again of another; but the combinations

are only in pairs, in which A is constant. A and B

make one being, A and C another, A and D a third;

but B will not combine with C, nor C with D; each

attribute being, as it were, conscious only of itself.

And therefore, although to those modifications of mind

and extension which we call ourselves there are

corresponding modifications under C and D, and generally

under each of the Infinite attributes of God; each of

ourselves being in a sense Infinite, nevertheless we

neither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselves

in this Infinite aspect; our actual consciousness

being limited to the phenomena of sensible experience.

English readers, however, are likely to care little for

all this; they will look to the general theory, and judge

of it as its aspect affects them. And first, perhaps,

they will be tempted to throw aside as absurd the

notion that their bodies go through the many operations

which they experience them to do, undirected by

their minds; it is a thing they may say at once

preposterous and incredible. And no doubt on the first

blush it sounds absurd, and yet, on second thoughts,

it is less so than it seems; and though we could not

persuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the sense

of having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not.

It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the human

body capable by its own virtue, and by the laws of

material organisation, of building a house, than of

thinking; and yet men are allowed to say that the

body thinks, without being regarded as candidates for

a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into

stem and leaf and throw out flowers; we observe it

fulfilling processes of chemistry more subtle than were

ever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and producing

structures more cunning than man can imitate. The

bird builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate

web and stretches it in the path of his prey; directed

not by calculating thought, as we conceive ourselves

to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance of

the nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and

call it instinct, but which we believe at least to be

some property residing in the organisation; and we

are not to suppose that the human body, the most

complex of all material structures, has slighter powers

in it than the bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect.

Let us listen to Spinoza himself:--

"There can be no doubt," he says, "that this hypothesis

is true, but unless I can prove it from experience, men

will not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly,

so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that their

bodies are set in motion. And yet what body can or cannot

do no one has yet determined; body, i.e., by the law of its

own nature, and without assistance from mind. No one

has so probed the human frame as to have detected all its

functions and exhausted the list of them: and there are

powers exhibited by animals far exceeding human sagacity;

and again, feats are performed by somnambulists on which

in the waking state the same persons would never venture

--itself a proof that body is able to accomplish what mind

can only admire. Men say that mind moves body, but how

it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it can

impart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what they

say, and are only confessing their own ignorance in specious

language. They will answer me, that whether or not they

understand how it can be, yet that they are assured by plain

experience that unless mind could perceive, body would be

altogether inactive; they know that it depends on the mind

whether the tongue speak or not. But do they not equally

experience that if their bodies are paralysed their minds

cannot think? That if their bodies are asleep their minds

are without power? That their minds are not at all times

equally able to exert themselves even on the same subject,

but depend on the state of their bodies? And as for

experience proving that the members of the body can be

controlled by the mind, I fear experience proves very much

the reverse. But it is absurd, they rejoin, to attempt to

explain from the mere laws of body such things as pictures,

or palaces, or works of art; the body could not build a

church unless mind directed it. I have shown, however,

that we do not vet know what body can or cannot do, or

what would naturally follow from the structure of it; that

we experience in the feats of somnambulists something

which antecedently to that experience would have seemed

incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely

any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of

things, as I have already proved, ought to follow from it."

We are not concerned to answer this reasoning,

although if the matter were one the debating of which

could be of any profit, it would undoubtedly have its

weight, and would require to be patiently considered.

Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunity

over speculations in which certainty is impossible, and

in which we are trifling with what is inscrutable.

Objections of a far graver kind were anticipated by

Spinoza himself, when he went on to gather out of his

philosophy "that the mind of man being part of the

Infinite intelligence, when we say that such a mind

perceives this thing or that, we are, in fact, saying that

God perceives it, not that he is Infinite, but as he is

represented by the nature of this or that idea; and

similarly, when we say that a man does this or that

action, we say that God does it not qua he is Infinite,

but qua he is expressed in that man's nature." "Here,"

he says, "many readers will no doubt hesitate, and

many difficulties will occur to them in the way of such

a supposition." Undoubtedly there was reason enough

to form, such an anticipation. As long as the Being

whom he so freely names remains surrounded with the

associations which in this country we bring with us out

of our child years, not all the logic in the world would

make us listen to language such as this. It is not so--

we know it, and it is enough. We are well aware

of the phalanx of difficulties which lie about our ordinary

theistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religion

depended on speculative consistency, and not in

obedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What are

we? what is anything? If it be not divine, what is it

then? If created--out of what is it created? and how

created--and why? These questions, and others far

more momentous which we do not enter upon here,

may be asked and cannot be answered; but we cannot

any the more consent to Spinoza on the ground that he

alone consistently provides an answer; because, as we

have said again and again, we do not care to have them

answered at all. Conscience is the single tribunal to

which we will be referred, and conscience declares

imperatively that what he says is not true. But of

all this it is painful to speak, and as far as possible we

designedly avoid it. Pantheism is not Atheism, but the

Infinite Positive and the Infinite Negative are not so

remote from one another in their practical bearings;

only let us remember that we are far indeed from the

truth if we think that God to Spinoza was nothing else

but that world which we experience. It is but one of

infinite expressions of Him, a conception which makes

us giddy in the effort to realize it.

We have arrived at last at the outwork of the whole

matter in its bearings upon life and human duty. It

was in the search after this last, that Spinoza, as we

said, travelled over so strange a country, and we now

expect his conclusions. To discover the true good

of man, to direct his actions to such ends as will secure

to him real and lasting felicity, and by a comparison of

his powers with the objects offered to them, to ascertain

how far they are capable of arriving at these objects,

and by what means they can best be trained towards

them--is the aim which Spinoza assigns to philosophy.

"Most people," he adds, "deride or vilify their nature;

it is a better thing to endeavour to understand it; and

however extravagant it may be thought in me to do so, I

propose to analyse the properties of that nature as if it

were a mathematical figure." Mind, being, as we have

seen, nothing else than the idea corresponding to this

or that affection of body; we are not, therefore, to

think of it as a faculty, but simply and merely as an act.

There is no general power called intellect, any more

than there is any general abstract volition, but only hic

et ille intellectus et haec et illa volitio, and again, by

the word Mind, is understood not merely acts of will

or intellect, but all forms also of consciousness of

sensation or emotion. The human body being composed

of many small bodies, the mind is similarly composed

of many minds, and the unity of body and of mind

depends on the relation which the component portions

maintain towards each other. This is obviously the

case with body, and if we can translate metaphysics into

common experience, it is equally the case with mind.

There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect;

a thousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form our

mental composition; and evidently since one contradicts

another, and each has a tendency to become dominant,

it is only in the harmonious equipoise of their several

activities, in their due and just subordination, that any

unity of action or consistency of feeling is possible. After

a masterly analysis of all these tendencies (the most

complete by far which has ever been made by any moral

philosopher), Spinoza arrives at the principles under

which such unity and consistency can be obtained as the

condition upon which a being so composed can look for

any sort of happiness. And these principles, arrived at

as they are by a route so different, are the same, and are

proposed by Spinoza as being the same, as those of the

Christian Religion.

It might seem impossible in a system which binds

together in so inexorable a sequence the relations of

cause and effect, to make a place for the action of human

self-control; but consideration will show, that however

vast the difference between those who deny and those

who affirm the liberty of the will (in the sense in which the

expression is usually understood), it is not a difference

which affects the conduct or alters the practical bearings

of it. It is quite possible that conduct may be determined

by laws; laws as absolute as those of matter;

and yet that the one as well as the other may be brought

under control by a proper understanding of those laws.

Now, experience seems plainly to say, that while all our

actions arise out of desire--that whatever we do, we do

for the sake of something which we wish to be or to

obtain--we are differently affected towards what is

proposed to us as an object of desire, in proportion as

we understand the nature of such object in itself and in

its consequences. The better we know the better we

act, and the fallacy of all common arguments against

necessitarianism lies in the assumption that it leaves

no room for self-direction; whereas it merely insists

in exact conformity with experience on the conditions

under which self-determination is possible. Conduct,

according to the necessitarian, depends on knowledge.

Let a man certainly know that there is poison in the

cup of wine before him, and he will not drink it. By

the law of cause and effect, his desire for the wine is

overcome by the fear of the pain or the death which will

follow; and so with everything which comes before him.

Let the consequences of any action be clear, definite,

and inevitable, and though Spinoza would not say that

the knowledge of them will be absolutely sufficient to

determine the conduct (because the clearest knowledge

may be overborne by violent passion), yet it is the best

which we have to trust to, and will do much if it cannot

do all. On this hypothesis, after a diagnosis of the various

tendencies of human nature, called commonly the

passions and affections, he returns upon the nature of

our ordinary knowledge to derive out of it the means for

their control: all these tendencies of themselves seek

their own objects--seek them blindly and immoderately;

and all the mistakes, and all the unhappinesses

of life, arise from the want of due understanding of these

objects, and a just subordination of the desire for them.

His analysis is remarkably clear; but it is too long for

us to enter upon it; the important thing being the

character of the control which is to be exerted. And to

arrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practical

utility, and which is peculiarly his own. Following his

tripartite division of knowledge, he finds all kinds of

it arrange themselves under one of two classes, and to

be either adequate or inadequate. By adequate knowledge

he means not necessarily what is exhaustive and

complete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct and

unconfused: by inadequate, what we know merely as

fact either derived from our own sensations, or from the

authority of others; but of the connexion of which

with other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning of

which we know nothing. We may have an adequate

idea of a circle, though we are unacquainted with all the

properties which belong to it; we conceive it distinctly

as a figure generated by the rotation of a line, one end

of which is stationary. Phenomena, on the other

hand, however made known to us--phenomena of the

senses, and phenomena of experience, as long as they

remain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higher

relation--we can never know except as inadequately.

We cannot tell what outward things are, by coming in

contact with certain features of them. We have a very

imperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, and

the sensations which we experience of various kinds

rather indicate to us the nature of these bodies themselves

than of the objects which affect them. Now it is

obvious that the greater part of mankind act only upon

knowledge of this latter kind. The amusements, even

the active pursuits of most of us, remain wholly within

the range of uncertainty; and, therefore, necessarily are

full of hazard and precariousness: little or nothing issues

as we expect; we look for pleasure and we find pain;

we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises the

ineffectual character which we so complain of in life--

the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form

the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity

of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the

constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm

to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The

conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which

cannot be understood by us except with the utmost

inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has

determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in

the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and,

although through a large tract of life "there comes one

event to all, to the wise and to the unwise," "yet

wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness."

The phenomena of experience by inductive experiment,

and just and careful consideration, arrange themselves

under laws uniform in their operation, and furnishing a

guide to the judgment; and over all things, although

the interval must remain unexplored for ever, because

what we would search into is Infinite, may be seen

the beginning of all things, the absolute eternal God.

"Mens humana," Spinoza continues, "quaedam agit,

quaedam vero patitur." In so far as it is influenced by

inadequate ideas, "eatenus patitur"--it is passive and

in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice: in so

far as its ideas are adequate, "eatenus agit"--it is

active, it is itself. While we are governed by outward

temptations, by the casual pleasures, the fortunes or the

misfortunes of life, we are but instruments, yielding

ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on by

its appetites, or the inanimate matter by the laws which

bind it--we are slaves--instruments, it may be, of some

higher purpose in the order of nature, but in ourselves

nothing; instruments which are employed for a special

work, and which are consumed in effecting it. So far,

on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as we

understand what we are, and direct our conduct not by

the passing emotion of the moment, but by a grave,

clear, and constant knowledge of what is really good, so

far we are said to act--we are ourselves the spring of

our own activity--we desire the genuine well-being of

our entire nature, and that we can always find, and it

never disappoints us when found.

All things desire life, seek for energy, and fuller and

ampler being. The component parts of man, his various

appetites and passions, are seeking for this while

pursuing each its own immoderate indulgence; and it is the

primary law of every single being that it so follows what

will give it increased vitality. Whatever will contribute

to such increase is the proper good of each; and the

good of man as a united being is measured and

determined by the effect of it upon his collective powers.

The appetites gather power from their several objects of

desire; but the power of the part is the weakness of

the whole; and man as a collective person gathers life,

being, and self-mastery only from the absolute good,--

the source of all real good, and truth, and energy,--

that is, God. The love of God is the extinction of all

other loves and all other desires; to know God, as far

as man can know him, is power, self-government, and

peace. And this is virtue, and this is blessedness.

Thus, by a formal process of demonstration, we are

brought round to the old conclusions of theology; and

Spinoza protests that it is no new doctrine which he is

teaching, but that it is one which in various dialects

has been believed from the beginning of the world.

It is a necessary consequence of the simple propositions

that happiness depends on the consistency and

coherency of character, and that such coherency can only

be given by the knowledge of the One Being, to know

whom is to know all things adequately, and to love

whom is to have conquered every other inclination.

The more entirely our minds rest on Him, the more

distinctly we regard all things in their relation to Him,

the more we cease to be under the dominion of external

things; we surrender ourselves consciously to do His will,

and as living men and not as passive things we become the

instruments of His power. When the true nature and

true causes of our affections become clear to us, they

have no more power to influence us. The more we

understand, the less can feeling sway us; we know that

all things are what they are, because they are so

constituted that they could not be otherwise, and we cease

to be angry with our brother, we cease to hate him; we

shall not fret at disappointment, nor complain of fortune,

because no such thing as fortune exists; and if we are

disappointed it is better than if we had succeeded, not

perhaps for ourselves, yet for the universe. We cannot

fear, when nothing can befall us except what God,

wills, and we shall not violently hope when the future,

whatever it be, will be the best which is possible.

Seeing all things in their place in the everlasting order,

Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation of

present pleasure will not overcome the certainty of

future pain, for the pain will be as sure as the pleasure,

and we shall see all things under a rule of adamant.

The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the idea

of contingency, and expect to escape the just issues of

their actions: the wise man will know that each action

brings with it its inevitable consequences, which even

God cannot change without ceasing to be Himself.

In such a manner, through all the conditions of

life, Spinoza pursues the advantages which will accrue

to man from the knowledge of God, God and man

being what his philosophy has described them. It

cannot be denied that it is most beautiful; although

much of its beauty is perhaps due to associations which

have arisen out of Christianity, and which in the

system of pantheism have no proper abiding place.

Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity,

he even seems to have relieved himself of the more

fearful features of the general creed. He acknowledges

no hell, no devil, no positive and active agency

at enmity with God; but sees in all things infinite

gradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and all

fulfilling the part allotted to them. Doubtless a pleasant

exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only we

could persuade ourselves that a hundred pages of

judiciously arranged demonstrations could really and

indeed have worked it for us. If we could indeed

believe that we could have the year without its winter,

day without night, sunlight without shadow. Evil is

unhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of.

Yet if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in

its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves

to the beauty of his practical rule of life, or the

disinterestedness and calm nobility which pervades it. He

will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded.

Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that

is the exhaustive end of all human desire. "Beatitudo

non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. Nihil aliud

est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitiva

cognitione oritur." And the same spirit of generosity

exhibits itself in all his conclusions. The ordinary

objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for

one man to obtain them is for another to lose them;

and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not

what any man should labour after. But the fullness of

God suffices for us all, and he who possesses this good

desires only to communicate it to every one, and to

make all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--

"The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour's

faults, and sparingly of the infirmity of human

nature; but he will speak largely of human virtue and

human power, and of the means by which that nature

can best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that

fear and aversion with which they look on goodness,

and learn with relieved hearts to love and desire it."

And once more:--"He who loves God will not desire

that God should love him in return with any partial or

particular affection, for that is to desire that God for his

sake should change his everlasting nature and become

lower than himself."

One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith would

seem in such a system to be necessarily wanting. Where

individual action is resolved into the modified activity

of the Universal Being, all absorbing and all evolving,

the individuality of the personal man would at best

appear but an evanescent and unreal shadow. Such

individuality, however, as we now possess, whatever it

be, might continue to exist in a future state as really as

it exists in the present, and those to whom it belongs

might be anxious naturally for its persistence. And yet

it would seem that if the soul be nothing except the idea

of a body actually existing, when that body is decomposed

into its elements, the soul corresponding to it must

accompany it into an answering dissolution. And this,

indeed, Spinoza in one sense actually affirms, when he

denies to the mind any power of retaining consciousness

of what has befallen it in life, "nisi durante corpore."

But Spinozism is a philosophy full of surprises; and our

calculations of what must belong to it are perpetually

baffled. The imagination, the memory, the senses,

whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perish

necessarily and eternally; and the man who has been

the slave of his inclinations, who has no knowledge of

God, and no active possession of himself, having in life

possessed no personality, loses in death the appearance

of it with the dissolution of the body.

Nevertheless, there is in God an idea expressing the

essence of the mind, united to the mind as the mind is

united to the body, and thus there is in the soul

something of an everlasting nature which cannot utterly

perish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many of

his most solemn conclusions, deserts for a moment the

thread of his demonstrations, and appeals to the

consciousness. In spite of our non-recollection of what

passed before our birth, in spite of all difficulties from

the dissolution of the body, "Nihilo minus," he says,

"sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse. Nam mens

non minus res illas sentit quas intelligendo concipit,

quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis enim oculi quibus

res videt observatque sunt ipsae demonstrationes."

This perception, immediately revealed to the mind,

falls into easy harmony with the rest of the system. As

the mind is not a faculty, but an act or acts,--not a

power of perception, but the perception itself,--in its

high union with the highest object (to use the metaphysical

language which Coleridge has made popular and

perhaps partially intelligible), the object and the subject

become one; a difficult expression, but the meaning of

which (as it bears on our present subject) may be

something of this kind:--If knowledge be followed as it ought

to be followed, and all objects of knowledge be regarded

in their relations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledge

of particular outward things, of nature, or life, or

history, becomes in fact, knowledge of God; and the

more complete or adequate such knowledge, the more

the mind is raised above what is perishable in the

phenomena to the idea or law which lies beyond them.

It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal, not upon

the temporary; and being thus occupied with the everlasting

laws, and its activity subsisting in its perfect

union with them, it contracts in itself the character of

the objects which possess it. Thus we are emancipated

from the conditions of duration; we are liable even to

death only quatenus patimur, as we are passive things

and not active intelligences; and the more we possess

such knowledge and are possessed by it, the more

entirely the passive is superseded by the active--so that

at last the human soul may "become of such a nature

that the portion of it which will perish with the body in

in comparison with that of it which shall endure, shall

be insignificant and nullius momenti." (Eth v. 38.)

Such are the principal features of a philosophy, the

influence of which upon Europe, direct and indirect, it

is not easy to over-estimate. The account of it is far

from being an account of the whole of Spinoza's labours;

his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" was the forerunner

of German historical criticism; the whole of which has

been but the application of principles laid down in that

remarkable work. But this was not a subject on which,

upon the present occasion, it was desirable to enter, and

we have designedly confined ourselves to the system

which is most associated with the name of its author.

It is this which has been really powerful, which has

stolen over the minds even of thinkers who imagine

themselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in the

absolute Pantheism of Schelling and Hegel, in the

Pantheistic Christianity of Herder and Schleiermacher.

Passing into practical life it has formed the strong

shrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has been

able to unite with the theories of the most extreme

materialism.

It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has been

unmixedly good) at the bottom of that more reverent

contemplation of nature which has caused the success of

our modern landscape painting, which inspired

Wordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is

to become an instrument of intellectual education, must

first be infused into the lessons of nature; the sense of

that "something" interfused in the material world--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;--

A motion and a spirit, which impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things."

If we shrink from regarding the extended universe,

with Spinoza, as an actual manifestation of Almighty

God, we are unable to rest in the mere denial that it is

this. We go on to ask what it is, and we are obliged to

conclude thus much at least of it, that every smallest

being was once a thought in his mind; and in the study

of what he has made we are really and truly studying

a revelation of himself.

It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather on

the moral side, that the point of main offence is lying;

in that excuse for evil and for evil men which the

necessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it in what

fair-sounding words we will. So plain this is that

common-sense people, and especially English people,

cannot bring themselves even to consider the question

without impatience, and turn disdainfully and angrily

from a theory which confuses their plain instincts of right

and wrong. Although, however, error on this side is

infinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehement

error can exist in this world with impunity; and it does

appear that in our common view of these matters we

have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience,

and have given the fatalist a vantage ground

of real truth which we ought to have considered and

allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enter

briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the

necessities of life are our best philosophers if we will

only listen honestly to what they say to us; and dislike

the lesson as we may, it is cowardice which refuses to

hear it.

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lies before

every man, and that he is free to choose between them,

and the responsibility of choice rests with himself. The

fatalist's belief is that every man's actions are

determined by causes external and internal over which he

has no power, leaving no room for any moral choice

whatever. The first is contradicted by plain facts; the

second by the instinct of conscience. Even Spinoza allows

that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard the

future as contingent, and ourselves as able to influence

it; and it is incredible that both our inward convictions

and our outward conduct should be built together upon

a falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be the

speculative account of the matter, we are practically

forced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the

truth, for it may be equally said that practically we are

forced to regard each other as not free; and to make

allowance, every moment, for influences for which we

cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not,

--if every person of sound mind (in the common

acceptation of the term) be equally able at all times to

act right if only he will,--why all the care which we

take of children? why the pains to keep them from

bad society? why do we so anxiously watch their

disposition, to determine the education which will best

answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we vary our

moral censure according to the opportunities of the

offender? Why do we find excuses for youth, for

inexperience, for violent natural passion, for bad

education, bad example? Except that we feel that all these

things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and

that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them. But

what we act upon in private life we cannot acknowledge

in our general ethical theories, and while our conduct in

detail is human and just, we have been contented to

gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and

coarse generalisations of political necessity. In the swift

haste of social life we must indeed treat men as we find

them. We have no time to make allowances; and

the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is a

mere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye

though he has been trained from his cradle in the

kennels of St. Giles's; and definite penalties must be

attached to definite acts, the conditions of political life

not admitting of any other method of dealing with them.

But it is absurd to argue from such rude necessity that

each act therefore, by whomsoever committed, is of specific

culpability. The act is one thing, the moral guilt is

another. And there are many cases in which, as Butler

again allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom,

the guilt attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether.

This is all plain matter of fact, and as long as we

continue to deny or ignore it, there will be found men (not

bad men, but men who love the truth as much as ourselves),

who will see only what we neglect, and will

insist upon it, and build their system upon it.

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those

natural tendencies which each of us brings with him into

the world,--which we did not make, and yet which

almost as much determine what we are to be, as the

properties of the seed determine the tree which shall

grow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or

obstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is as

large difference in their dispositions as in the features of

their faces; and that by no original act of their own.

Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult or

impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Two

children are taught to draw; one learns with ease, the

other hardly or never. In vain the master will show

him what to do. It seems so easy: it seems as if he

had only to will and the thing would be done; but

it is not so. Between the desire and the execution lies

the incapable organ which only wearily, and after long

labour, imperfectly accomplishes what is required of it.

And the same, to a certain extent, unless we will deny

the plainest facts of experience, holds true in moral

actions. No wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust

aside as these things are in the popular beliefs, as soon

as they are recognized in their full reality they should

be mistaken for the whole truth, and that the free-will

theory be thrown aside as a chimera.

It may be said, and it often is said, that all such

reasonings are merely sophistical--that however we

entangle ourselves in logic, we are conscious that we are

free; we know--we are as sure as we are of our

existence that we have power to act this way or that

way, exactly as we choose. But this is less plain than

it seems; and if we grant it, it proves less than it appears

to prove. It may be true that we can act as we choose,

but can we choose? Is not our choice determined for

us? We cannot determine from the fact, because we

always have chosen as soon as we act, and we cannot

replace the conditions in such a way as to discover

whether we could have chosen anything else. The

stronger motive may have determined our volition

without our perceiving it; and if we desire to prove

our independence of motive, by showing that we can

choose something different from that which we should

naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the

circle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes,

itself a motive. Again, consciousness of the possession

of any power may easily be delusive; we can properly

judge what our powers are only by what they have

actually accomplished; we know what we have done,

and we may infer from having done it, that our power

was equal to what it achieved; but it is easy for us to

overrate ourselves if we try to measure our abilities in

themselves. A man who can leap five yards may think

that he can leap six; yet he may try and fail. A man

who can write prose may only learn that he cannot

write poetry from the badness of the verses which he

produces. To the appeal to consciousness of power

there is always an answer:--that we may believe

ourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that we

may be deceived.

There are, however, another set of feelings which

cannot be set aside in this way, which do prove that, in

some sense or other, in some degree or other, we are

the authors of our own actions,--that there is a point

fit which we begin to be responsible for them. It is

one of the clearest of all inward phenomena, that, where

two or more courses involving moral issues are before

us, whether we have a consciousness of power to choose

between them or not, we have a consciousness that

we ought to choose between them; a sense of duty

hoti dei touto prattein, as Aristotle expresses it, which

we cannot shake off. Whatever this involves (and

some measure of freedom it must involve or it is

nonsense), the feeling exists within us, and refuses to yield

before all the batteries of logic. It is not that of the

two courses we know that one is in the long run the

best, and the other more immediately tempting. We

have a sense of obligation irrespective of consequence,

the violation of which is followed again by a sense of

self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain will

Spinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as they

are with the theory of powerlessness, are mere mistakes

arising out of a false philosophy. They are primary

facts of sensation most vivid in minds of most vigorous

sensibility; and although they may be extinguished by

habitual profligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed by

logic, the paralysis of the conscience is no more a proof

that it is not a real power of perceiving real things,

than blindness is a proof that sight is not a real power.

The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are not

conclusions of reasoning, but immediate sensations like

those of seeing and hearing; and although, like the

other senses, they may be mistaken sometimes in the

accounts they render to us, the fact of the existence of

such feelings at all proves that there is something

which corresponds to them. If there be any such

things as "true ideas," or clear distinct perceptions at

all, this of praise and blame is one of them, and according

to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it

involves. And it involves that somewhere or other the

influence of causes ceases to operate, and that some

degree of power there is in men of self-determination,

by the amount of which, and not by their specific

actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured.

Speculative difficulties remain in abundance. It will

be said in a case, e.g. of moral trial, that there may

have been power; but was there power enough to resist

the temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. If

there was not, there was no responsibility. We must

answer again from a practical instinct. We refuse to

allow men to be considered all equally guilty who

have committed the same faults; and we insist that

their actions must be measured against their opportunities.

But a similar conviction assures us that there is

somewhere a point of freedom. Where that point is,

where other influences terminate, and responsibility

begins, will always be of intricate and often impossible

solution. But if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to

necessitarianism, and man is what he has been hitherto

supposed to be--an exception in the order of nature,

with a power not differing in degree but differing in

kind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all

life, is a mystery; and as to dissect the body will not

reveal the secret of animation, so with the actions of

the moral man. The spiritual life, which alone gives

them meaning and being, glides away before the logical

dissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work

upon.

____