of its nature, and by itself alone is determined to action. But that is
necessary, or rather constrained, which owes its existence to another,
and acts according to certain and determinate causes.
VIII. By eternity I understand existence itself, in as far as it is
conceived necessarily to follow from the sole definition of an eternal
thing.
AXIOMS.
I. Everything which is, is in itself, or in some other thing.
II. That which cannot be conceived through another, _per aliud_ must be
conceived, _per se_.
III. From a given determinate cause the effect necessarily follows, and
_vice versa_. If no determinate cause be given, no effect can follow.
IV. The knowledge of an effect depends on the knowledge of the cause,
and includes it.
V. Things that have nothing in common with each other cannot be
understood by means of each other--that is, the conception of one, does
not involve the conception of the other.
VI. A true idea must agree with its original in nature.
VII. Whatever can be clearly conceived as non-existent does not, in its
essence, involve existence.
PROPOSITIONS.
I. Substance is prior in nature to its accidents. Demonstration. Per
definitions three and five.
II. Two substances, having different attributes, have nothing in common
with each other. Dem. This follows from def. three; for each substance
must be conceived in itself and through itself; in other words, the
conception of one does not involve the conception of the other.
III. Of things which have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of
the other. Dem. If they have nothing in common, then (per axiom five)
they cannot be conceived by means of each other; _ergo_ (per axiom
four,) one cannot be the cause of the other.--Q. E. D.
IV. Two or more distinct things are distinguished among themselves,
either through the diversity of their attributes, or through that of
their modes. Dem. Everything which is, in itself, or in some other thing
(per ax. one)--that is (per def. three and five,) there is nothing out
of ourselves (_extra intellectum_, outside the intellect) but substance
and its modes. There is nothing out of ourselves whereby things can be
distinguished amongst one another, except substances, or (which is the
same thing, per def. lour) their attributes and modes.
V. It is impossible that there should be two or more substances of the
same nature, or of the same attributes. Dem. If there are many different
substances they must be distinguished by the diversity of their
attributes or of their modes (per prop. 4.) If only by the diversity
of their attributes, it is thereby conceded that there is, nevertheless,
only one substance of the same attribute; but if their diversity of
modes, then, substance being prior in order of time to its modes, it
must be considered independent of them--that is (per def. three and
six,) cannot be conceived as distinguished from another--that is
(per prop, four,) there cannot be many substances, but only one
substance.--Q. E. D.
VI. One substance cannot be created by another substance. Dem. There
cannot be two substances with the same attributes (per prop, five)--that
is (per prop. two,) that hare anything in common with each other; and,
therefore (per prop, three,) one cannot be the cause of the other.
Corollary 1. Hence it follows that substance cannot be created by
anything else. For there is nothing in nature except substance and its
modes (per axiom one, and def. three and five.) Now, this substance, not
being produced by another, is self-caused.
Corollary 2. This proposition is more easily to be demonstrated by the
absurdity of its contradiction; for if substance can be produced by
anything else, the conception of it would depend on the conception of
the cause (per axiom four,) and hence (per def. three,) it would not be
substance.
VII. It pertains to the nature of substance to exist. Dem. Substance
cannot be produced by anything else (per coroli. prop, six,) and is
therefore the cause of itself--that is (per def. one,) its essence
necessarily involves existence; or it pertains to the nature of
substance to exist.--Q. E. D.
VIII. All substance is necessarily infinite. Dem. There exists but one
substance of the same attribute; and it must either exist as infinite or
finite. But not finite, for (per def. two) as finite it must be limited
by another substance of the same nature, and in that case there would be
two substances of the same attributes, which (per prop, five) is absurd.
Substance therefore is infinite.--Q. E. D.
"Scholium I.--I do not doubt but that to all who judge confusedly
of things, and are not wont to inquire into first causes, it will be
difficult to admit the demonstration of prop. 7, because they do not
sufficiently distinguish between the modifications of substances, and
substances themselves, and are ignorant of the manner in which things
are produced. Hence it follows, that the commencement which they see
natural things have, they attribute to substances; for he who knows not
the true cause of things, confounds all things, and feigns that trees
talk like men; that men are formed from stones as well as from seeds,
and that all forms can be changed into all other forms. So, also, those
who confound the divine nature with the human, naturally attribute
human affections to God, especially as they are ignorant of how these
affections are produced in the mind. If men attended to the nature of
substance, they would not, in the least, doubt proposition seven; nay,
this proposition would be an axiom to all, and would be numbered among
common notions. For by substance they would understand that which exists
in itself, and is concerned through itself--_i.e._, the knowledge of
which does not require the knowledge of anything as antecedent to it.
But by modification they would understand that which is in another
thing, the conception of which is formed by the conception of the thing
in which it is, or to which it belongs. We can have, therefore, correct
ideas of non-existent modifications, because, although out of the
understanding they have no reality, yet their essence is so comprehended
in that of another, that they can be conceived through this other.
The truth of substance (out of the understanding) lies nowhere but in
itself, because it is conceived _per se_. If therefore any one says
he has a clear idea of substance, and yet doubt whether such substance
exist, this would be as much as to say that he has a true idea, and
nevertheless doubts whether it be not false (as a little attention
sufficiently manifests;) or if any man affirms substance to be created,
he at the same time affirms that a true idea has become false, than
which nothing can be more absurd. Hence it is necessarily confessed that
the existence of substance, as well as its essence, is an eternal truth.
And hence we must conclude that there is only one substance possessing
the same attribute, which requires here a fuller development. I note
therefore--1. That the correct definition of a thing includes and
expresses nothing but the nature of the thing defined. From which
follows--2. That no definition includes or expresses a distinct number
of individuals, because it expresses nothing but the nature of the thing
defined; _ergo_, the definition of a triangle expresses no more than the
nature of a triangle, and not any fixed number of triangles. 3. There
must necessarily be a distinct cause for the existence of every existing
thing. 4. This cause, by reason of which anything exists, must either be
contained in the nature and definition of the existing thing (viz., that
it pertains to its nature to exist,) or else must be beyond it--must be
something different from it.
"As therefore it pertains to the nature of substance to exist, so must
its definition include a necessary existence, and consequently from
its sole definition we must conclude its existence. But as from its
definition, as already shown in notes two and three, it is not possible
to conclude the existence of many substances--_ergo_, it necessarily
follows that only one substance of the same nature can exist."
It will be necessary for the reader to remember that Spinoza commenced
his philosophical studies at the same point with Descartes. Both
recognized existence as the primal fact, self-evident and indisputable.
But while Descartes had, in some manner, fashioned a quality--God and
God-created substance--Spinoza only found one, substance, the definition
of which included existence. By his fourth proposition ("of things which
have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of the other, ") he
destroyed the creation theory, because by that theory God is assumed to
be a spirit having nothing in common with matter, yet acting on
matter; and Lewes speaks of the fourth proposition in the following
terms:--"This fallacy has been one of the most influential corrupters
of philosophical speculation. For many years it was undisputed, and most
metaphysicians still adhere to it. The assertion is that only like can
act upon like; but although it is true that _like_ produces (causes)
_like_, it is also true that like produces _unlike_; thus fire produces
pain when applied to our bodies; _explosion_ when applied to gunpowder;
_charcoal_ when applied to wood; all these effects are unlike the
cause." We cannot help thinking that in this instance, the usually
thoughtful Lewes has either confused substance with its modes, or, for
the sake of producing a temporary effect, has descended to mere sophism.
Spinoza's proposition is, that _substances_ having nothing in common,
cannot act on one another. Lewes deals with several modes of the same
substance as though they were different substances. Way, more, to
make his argument the more plausible, he entirely ignores in it that
_noumenon_ of which he speaks as underlying all phenomena, and uses each
phenomenon as a separate existence. In each of the instances mentioned,
however varied may be the modification, the essence is the same. They
are merely examples of one portion of the whole acting upon another
portion, and there is that in each mode which is common to the whole,
and by means of which the action takes place.
Much has been said of Spinoza's "God" and "Divine Substance," and we
must refer the reader to Definition Six, in which God is defined as
being "infinite substance." Now, although we should be content to strike
the word "God" out of our own tablet of philosophical nomenclature, as
being a much misused, misrepresented, and entirely useless word, yet we
must be very careful, when we find another man using the word, to get
his precise definition, and not to use any-other ourselves while in his
company.
Spinoza, when asked "What name do you attach to infinite substance?"
says, "God."--If he had said any other word we could not have quarrelled
with him so long as he defined the word, and adhered strictly to the
terms of his definition, although we might regret that he had not either
coined a word for himself, or used one less maltreated by the mass.
Spinoza said, "I can only take cognizance of one substance (of which
I am part) having infinite attributes of extension and thought. I
take cognizance of substance by its modes, and in my consciousness of
existence. Every thing is a mode of the attribute of extension, every
thought, wish, or feeling, a mode of the attribute of thought. I call
this, substance, with infinite attributes, God." Spinoza, like all other
thinkers, found himself overpowered by the illimitable vastness of the
infinite when attempting to grasp it by his mental powers, but unlike
other men he did not endeavor to relieve himself by separating himself
from that infinite; but, knowing he was a part of the whole, not
divisible from the remainder, he was content to aim at perfecting his
knowledge of existence rather than at dogmatising upon an indefinable
word, which, if it represented anything, professed to represent an
incomprehensible existence far beyond his reach.
We ought not to wonder that in many parts of Spinoza's writings we find
the word "God" treated in a less coherent manner than would be
possible under the definition given in his "Ethics," and for these
reasons:--Spinoza, from his cradle upwards, had been surrounded with
books and traditions sanctified by the past, and impressed on his
willing mind by his family, his tutors, and the heads of his church; a
mind like his gathered all that was given, even more quickly than it was
offered, still craving for more--"more light"--"more light"--and at last
light came bursting on the young thinker like a lightning flash at dark
midnight, revealing his mind in chains, which had been cast round him in
his nursery, his school, his college, his synagogue. By a mighty
effort he burst these chains, and walked forth a free man, despite the
entreaties of his family, the reasonings of the rabbis, the knife of the
fanatic, the curse of his church, and the edict of the state. But should
it be a matter of surprise to us that some of the links of those broken
chains should still hang on the young philosopher, and, seeming to be a
part of himself, almost imperceptibly incline to old ways of thinking,
and to old modes of utterance of those thoughts! Wonder not that a few
links bang about him, but rather that he ever succeeded in breaking
those chains at all. Spinoza, after his secession from his synagogue,
became logically an Atheist; education and early impressions enlarged
this into a less clearly-defined Pantheism; but the logic comes to
us naked, disrobed of all by which it might have been surrounded in
Spinoza's mind. If that logic be correct, then all the theologies of
the world are false. We have presented it to the reader to judge of
for himself. Many men have written against it; of these some have
misunderstood, some have misrepresented, some have failed, and few have
left us a proof that they had endeavored to deal with Spinoza on his own
ground. Maccall says, "In the glorious throng of heroic names, there
are few nobler than Spinoza's. Apart altogether from the estimate we may
form of his philosophy, there is something unspeakably interesting in
the life and the character of the man. In his metaphysical system there
are two things exceedingly distinct. There is, first, the immense
and prodigious, but terrible mathematical skeleton, which his subtle
intellect binds up and throws as calmly into space as we drop a pebble
into the water, and whose bones, striking against the wreck of all that
is sacred in belief, or bold in speculation, rattle a wild response to
our wildest phantasies, and drive us almost to think in despair that
thinking is madness; and there is, secondly, the divinest vision of the
infinite, and the divinest incense which the intuition of the infinite
ever yet poured forth at the altar of creation."
The "Treatise on Politics" is not Spinoza's greatest work; it is, in
all respects, inferior to the "Ethics," and to the "Theologico-Political
Treatise." But there are in politics certain eternal principles, and it
is for setting forth and elucidating these that the Treatise of Spinoza
is so valuable.
In the second chapter of that Treatise, after defining what he means by
nature, etc., he, on the sixth section, proceeds as follows:--"But many
believe that the ignorant disturb more than follow the order of nature,
and conceive of men in nature as a state within the state. For they
assert that the human mind has not been produced by any natural causes,
but created immediately by God, and thereby rendered so independent of
other things as to have absolute power of determining itself, and of
using reason aright. But experience teaches us more than enough, that it
is no more in our power to have a sound mind than a sound body. Since,
moreover, everything, as far as it is able, strives to conserve its
being, we cannot doubt that if it were equally in our power to live
according to the prescripts of reason, as to be led by blind desire,
all would seek the guidance of reason and live wisely, which is not the
case. For every one is the slave of the particular pleasure to which
he is most attached. Nor do theologians remove the difficulty when they
assert that this inability is a vice, or a sin of human nature, which
derives its origin from the fall of the first parent. For if it was in
the power of the first man to stand rather than to fall, and if he was
sound in faculty, and had perfect control over his own mind, how did it
happen that he, the wise and prudent, fell? But they say he was deceived
and tempted by the devil. But who was it that led astray and tempted
the devil himself? Who, I ask, rendered this the most excellent of
intelligent creatures so mad, that he wished to be greater than God?
Could he render himself thus mad--he who had a sane mind, and strove as
much as in him lay to conserve his being? How, moreover, could it happen
that the first man in possession of his entire mental faculties, and
master of his will, should be both open to temptation, and suffer
himself to be robbed of his mind? For if he had the power of using his
reason aright, he could not be deceived; for as far as in him lay, he
necessarily sought to conserve his own being, and the sanity of
his mind. But it is supposed he had this in his power, therefore he
necessarily conserved his sane mind, neither could he be deceived.
Which is evidently false from his history; and, consequently, it must be
granted that it was not in the power of the first person to use reason
aright, but that he, like us, was subject to passions."
Spinoza is scarcely likely to become a great favorite with the "Woman's
Rights Convention." In his ninth chapter of the same Treatise, he says,
"If by nature women were equal to men, and excelled as much as they in
strength of mind and in talent, truly amongst nations, so many and
so different, some would be found where both sexes ruled equally, and
others where the men were ruled by the women, and so educated as to
be inferior to them in talent; but as this has never happened, we are
justified in assuming that women, by nature, have not an equal right
with men, but that they are necessarily obedient to men, and thus it can
never happen that both sexes can equally rule, and still less that men
be ruled by women."
Lewes, in his seventh chapter on Modern Philosophy, thus sums up
Spinoza's teachings and their result. He says:--
"The doctrine of Spinoza was of great importance, if for nothing more
than having brought about the first crisis in modern philosophy. His
doctrine was so clearly stated, and so rigorously deduced from admitted
premises, that he brought philosophy into this dilemma:--
"'Either my premises are correct; and we must admit that every clear
and distinct idea is absolutely true; true not only subjectively, but
objectively.
"'If so, my objection is true;
"'Or my premises are false; the voice of consciousness is not the voice
of truth;
"'And if so, then is my system false, but all philosophy is impossible;
since the only ground of certitude--our consciousness--is pronounced
unstable, our only means of knowing the truth is pronounced
fallacious.'"
"Spinozism or scepticism, choose between them, for you have no other
choice.
"Mankind refused, however, to make a choice. If the principles which
Descartes had established could have no other result than Spinozism, it
was worth while inquiring whether those principles might not themselves
be modified.
"The ground of discussion was shifted, psychology took the place of
ontology. It was Descartes's theory of knowledge which led to Spinozism;
that theory must therefore he examined; that theory becomes the great
subject of discussion. Before deciding upon the merits of any system
which embraced the great questions of creation, the Deity, immortality,
etc., men saw that it was necessary to decide upon the competency of the
human mind to solve such problems. All knowledge must be obtained either
through experience or independent of experience. Knowledge dependent on
experience must necessarily be merely knowledge of _phenomena_. All are
agreed that experience can only be experience of ourselves as modified
by objects. All are agreed that to know things _per se--noumena_--we
must know them through some other channel then experience. Have we or
have we not that other channel? This is the problem."
"Thus, before we can dogmatize upon on to logical subjects, we must
settle this question--Can we transcend the sphere of our consciousness,
and know things _per se_?"
"I."
ANTHONY COLLINS.
Freethought, as developed in the Deistic straggles of the seventeenth
century, had to battle for existence against the Puritanic reaction
which took its second rise from the worn-out licentious age of the last
of the Stuarts, and that of the no less dangerous (though concealed)
libertinism of the Dutch king. A religious rancor also arose which, but
for the influence of a new power, would have re-enacted the tragedy of
religious persecution. But this rancor became somewhat modified, from
the fact that the various parties now were unlike the old schismatics,
who were each balanced at the opposite ends of the same pole--extreme
Papacy on the one hand, and Fifth-monarchists on the other--when
each oscillation from the Protestant centre deranged the balance of
enthusiasm, and drove it to the farthest verge of fanaticism, until all
religious parties were hurled into one chaos of disunion. Such were the
frequent changes of the seventeenth century--but at its close the
power of Deism had evolved a platform on which was to be fought the
hostilities of creeds. Here, then, could not exist that commingling of
sects, which were deducible in all their varied extravagance from the
Bible. Theology had no longer to fight with itself, but with philosophy.
Metaphysics became the Jehu of opinion, and sought to drive its chariot
through the fables of the saints. The old doctrines had to be re-stated
to meet new foes. For the Papists, Nonconformists, and Brownists, were
excluded to make way for the British Illuminati, who spread as much
consternation through England as did the French Encyclopædists across
Europe. The new field of action was only planned, for when Catholicism
first opposed Protestantism, its leaders little thought what a Pandoric
box it was opening--nor did the Divines of the latter sect ever
doubt the finality of their own doctrines. They wished to replace one
infallibility by another. And the same charge can be substantiated
against Deism. When in this Augustan age the Free-thinking leaders,
fresh from the trammels of Christism, first took the name of Moral
Philosophers, they little knew they were paving the way for an Atheism
they so much dreaded--a democracy more unbridled than their most
constitutional wishes--a political economy to be tried for half a
century, and then to be discarded--a revolutionary fervor which should
plough up Europe, and then give place to a Communism, which the
first founders of this national agitation would have gazed upon with
amazement, and shrunk from with despair. Such is the progress of change.
The rise of the Deistic movement may be defined in a sentence. It was
the old struggle of speculative opinion shifting its battle-ground from
theology to philosophy, prior to the one being discarded, and the other
developed into positive science.
Amongst the most distinguished of these reformers, stands the name of
Anthony Collins.