Two centuries have elapsed since Spinoza passed from the world of the
living, and to-day that high and tranquil spirit walks the earth once
more and men make wide their hearts to receive his memory and his name.
The great men whom the past has wronged, receive at last time's tardy
recompense.
On the day that Columbus set sail for America, the Jews left Spain in
exile. Many of their number, however, who could not find it in their
hearts to bid adieu to their native land, remained and simulated the
practice of devout Catholics while in secret they preserved their
allegiance to their ancestral religion. They occupied high places in the
church and state, and monks, prelates and bishops were counted in their
ranks. Ere long the suspicions of the Inquisition were alarmed against
these covert heretics, and their position became daily more perilous and
insecure. Some were condemned to the stake, others pined for years in
dungeons; those that could find the means, escaped and sought in distant
lands security and repose from persecution. It was especially the Free
States of Holland whose enlightened policy offered an asylum to the
fugitives, and thither accordingly in great numbers they directed their
steps. Their frugality, their thrift and enterprise, contributed not a
little to build up the prosperity of the Dutch metropolis.
In the opening of the seventeenth century a considerable congregation of
the Jews had collected in the city of Amsterdam. There in the year
1632, the child of Spanish emigrants, Benedict Spinoza was born. Of
his childhood we know little. At an early age he was initiated into
the mysteries of Hebrew lore, was instructed in the Hebrew grammar, and
learned to read and translate the various writings of the Old Testament.
He was taught to thread his way through the mazes of the Talmud, and its
subtle discussions proved an admirable discipline in preparing him for
the favorite pursuits of his after years. Lastly he was introduced to
the study of the Jewish philosophers, among whom Maimonides and Ibn Ezra
engaged his especial attention. Maimonides, one of the most profound
thinkers of the middle ages, strove to harmonize the teachings of
Aristotle with the doctrines of the Bible. Ibn Ezra on the other hand,
was a confirmed sceptic. In his biblical commentaries he anticipates
many noteworthy discoveries of modern criticism, and his orthodoxy in
other respects also is more than doubtful.
In all these different branches of theology the young Spinoza made rapid
progress and soon gained astonishing proficiency. He was the favorite
of his instructors, and they predicted that he would one day become a
shining light of the synagogue. Not content, however, with this course
of study, Spinoza addressed himself to the study of Roman literature,
and with the assistance of a certain Dr. Van den Ende, who had at that
time gained considerable repute as a teacher of liberal learning, he
soon became an accomplished Latin scholar. He also took up the study of
Geometry and of Physics, and acquired considerable skill in the art of
sketching. His mind being thus stored with various knowledge, he was
prepared to enter the vast realm of metaphysical speculation and
here the works of Rene Descartes, preeminently engaged his attention.
Descartes, whose motto, _De omnibus dubitandum est_, sufficiently
indicates the revolutionary character of his teachings, was the leader
of the new school of thought on the continent. His influence proved
decisive in shaping the career of Spinoza. Bruno also deserves mention
among those who determined the bias of Spinoza's mind. I mean that Bruno
was among the first followers of Copernicus, proclaimed the doctrine of
the infinity of worlds and who himself inculcated a species of pantheism
for which he paid the last penalty at Rome in the year 1600, thirty-two
years before Spinoza was born. By all these influences the mind of the
young philosopher was widened beyond the sphere of his early education.
In the pursuit of truth he sought the society of congenial minds, and
found among the cultivated Christians of his day that intellectual
sympathy of which he stood in need. From the high plane of thought
which he had now reached, the rites and practices of external religion
dwindled in importance, and the questions of creed for which the mass
of men contend appeared little and insignificant. His absence from the
worship of the synagogue now began to be remarked; it was rumored
that he neglected the prescribed fasts and he was openly charged
with partaking of forbidden food. At first he was treated with great
leniency. So high was his credit with the Rabbis, so impressed were they
with his singular abilities, that they strove by every gentle means to
win him back to his allegiance. They admonished him, held out prospects
of honor and emolument; it is even stated that at last in despair of
reclaiming him they offered an annual pension of a thousand florins to
purchase his silence. Spinoza himself was keenly alive to the gravity
of his position. It had been fondly hoped that he would shed new lustre
upon the religion of Israel. He would be accused of vile ingratitude for
deserting his people. He foresaw the inevitable rupture that would cut
him off forever from friends and kinsmen, from the opportunities of
wealth and honorable position, and deliver him over to privation and
poverty. He himself tells us in the introduction of a work which had
long been forgotten and has been only recently rescued from oblivion,
that he saw riches and honor and all those goods for which men strive,
placed before him on the one hand, and a sincere life serenely true
to itself on the other; but that the former seemed veritable shams and
evils compared with that one great good. Nay, he said, though he might
never reach the absolute truth, he felt as one sick unto death, who
knows but one balm that can help him and who must needs search for that
balm whereby perchance he may be healed.
Great was the commotion stirred up against him in the Jewish community
of Amsterdam. One evening a fanatic assaulted him on the street and
attempted his life. The stroke of the assassin's dagger was successfully
parried. But Spinoza felt that the city was now no longer safe for him
to dwell in. He fled and for some time frequently changed his place of
residence, until at last he settled at the Hague where he remained until
his death. In the mean time the lenient spirit of the Jewish leaders had
changed into stern, uncompromising rigor. Observe now how persecution
breeds persecution. It had been the pride of Judaism from of old that
within its pale the practice of religion was deemed more essential
than the theory; that it permitted the widest divergence in matters of
belief, and granted ample tolerance to all. But these Jews of Amsterdam,
fresh from the dungeons and the torture chambers of the Inquisition, had
themselves imbibed the dark spirit of their oppressors. Uriel d'Acosta
they had driven to the verge of insanity and to a tragic death by their
cruel bigotry. And now the same methods were employed against a wiser
and greater and purer man, far than he.
On the 27th of July, 1656, in the synagogue of Amsterdam, the sacred
ark, containing the scrolls of the law, being kept open during the
ceremony, the edict of excommunication was solemnly promulgated. It
reads somewhat as follows:
"By the decree of the angels and the verdict of the saints we separate,
curse and imprecate Baruch de Spinoza with the consent of the blessed
God and of this holy congregation, before the holy books of the Law with
the commandments that are inscribed therein, with the ban with which
Joshua banned Jericho, with the curse with which Elias cursed the
youths, and with all the imprecations that are written in the Law.
Cursed be he by day and cursed by night; cursed when he lies down,
and cursed when he rises; cursed in his going forth, and cursed in his
coming in. May the Lord God refuse to pardon him; may his wrath and
anger be kindled against this man, and on him rest all the curses that
are written in this book of the Law. May the Lord wipe out his name
from under the heavens, and separate him for evil from all the tribes
of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament that are written in the
book of the Law. And ye that hold fast to the Lord God are all living
this day! we warn you that none shall communicate with him either by
word of mouth or letter, nor show him any favor, nor rest under the same
roof with him, nor approach his person within four yards, nor read any
writing that he has written."
When Spinoza heard of this anathema he calmly replied: "They compel me
to do nothing which I was not previously resolved upon." He retired
from the commerce of the world. He coveted solitude. Within his silent
chamber he moved in a world of his own. There in twenty years of patient
passionless toil he built up the mighty edifice of his system. It rises
before us as if hewn of granite rock. Its simplicity, its grandeur,
its structural power have been the wonder of men. I can offer only the
barest outline of its design.
Man's questioning spirit seeks to penetrate to the heart of Nature,
would grasp the origin of things. There is this mighty riddle: who will
solve it? Various attempts have been made. Pantheism is one. Spinoza was
the great philosopher of Pantheism.
Beneath all diversity there is unity. In all of Nature's myriad forms
and changes, there is a substance unchangeable. It is uncreated,
undivided, uncaused, the Absolute, Infinite, God. Thought and extension
are its attributes; it is the One in All, the All in One. God is not
matter, is not mind; is that deeper unity in which matter and mind are
one; God or Nature, Spinoza says. This is not the God of theology. God
is in the tree, in the stone, in the stars, in man. God does not live,
nor labor for any purpose, but produces from the necessity of his Being
in endless variety, in ceaseless activity. He is the inner cause of all
things, the ultimate Reality, and all things are as in their nature they
partake of him.
Man also is of God. The essence of man is in the mind. Man is a logical
being. God alone owns truth; in so far as man thinks truly and clearly,
he is a part of the infinite God. Logic is the basis of ethics. Spinoza
ignores sentiment, ignores art. Good and evil are but other names for
useful and not useful. But that alone is useful that we follow the
necessary and universal laws, seeking by the depth and reach of
intellect to know and understand.
Virtue is the pursuit of knowledge. There are three kinds of knowledge:
the blurred perceptions of the senses, the light of the understanding,
the intuition of intellect. The last is the highest.
Virtue is the sense of being; whatever heightens the joyous
consciousness of our active faculties is therefore good. The wise man
delights in the moderate enjoyment of pleasant food and drink, in the
color and loveliness of green shrubs, in the adornment of garments, in
music's sweetness. But our true being is to be found only in intellect;
hence, virtue the joy of being, is the joy of thought; hence, the bold
assertion--that is moral which helps, and that immoral which hinders
thought.
Man is a social being. As a drop is raised upward in the great ocean
by the onflowing of the wave, so the individual mind is exalted by the
presence and communion of congenial minds moving in the same current.
'Tis thus that Spinoza deduces the social virtues. Hate is evil at all
times, for hate implies the isolation and the weakness of the powers of
reason. We should reward hatred with love and restore the broken accord
of intellect. Love is the sense of kinship in the common search for
reason's goal--wisdom. That all men should so live and act together that
they may form, as it were, one body and one mind, is the ideal of life.
Friendship therefore he prizes as the dearest of earth's possessions,
and wedlock he esteems holy because in it is cemented the union of two
souls for the common search of truth. We should be serene at all times
and shun fear, which is weakness, and hope also which is the child of
desire, and haughtiness and humbleness and remorse and pity should we
avoid. But in stillness and with collected power shall we possess our
souls obedient to the laws of mind that make our being and helping when
we help for reason's sake. The passions bind us to passing phenomena.
When they become transparent to our reason, when we know their causes
then our nature conquers outward nature and we are masters, we are free.
Thus the emotional life is extinguished. The feelings lose their color
and vitality, become blank "as lines and surfaces," and man, freed from
the constraints of passion, dwells in the pure realm of intellect, and
in constant intercourse with the mind of God, fulfills the purpose of
his existence--to know and understand.
Against the blows of misfortune also reason steels us. Sorrow is but the
lurking suspicion that all might have been otherwise. When we come to
know that all things are by necessity, we shall find tranquillity in
yielding to the inevitable. For so God works by necessity. For all
things are in his hands as clay in the hand of the potter, which the
potter taketh and fashioneth therefrom vessels of diverse value, some
to honor and some to disgrace. And none shall rebuke him, for all is by
necessity.
When the body passes away the mind does not wholly perish, but something
remains that is infinite, an eternal modus dwelling in the depths of
the eternal mind. But though we knew not that something of the mind
remained, yet were goodness and strength of soul to be sought for above
all else. For who, foreseeing that he cannot always feed on healthy
nourishment, would therefore sate himself with deadly poison? or who,
though he knew that the mind is not immortal, would therefore lead an
empty life, devoid of reason's good and guidance? The wisdom of the wise
and the freedom of the free is not in the aspect of death but of life.
Religion and piety lead us to follow the laws of necessity in the world
where they are manifest, to dwell on the intellect of God, of God their
fount and origin.
But I forbear to enter farther into this wonderful system. We see a
giant wrestling with nature, seeking to wrest from her her secret.
Mysterious nature baffles him and the riddle is still unread. That
substance of which he speaks is no more than an abstraction of the mind
whose reality in the outward world he has failed to prove. He has also
erred in turning aside from the rich and manifold life of the emotions,
for the emotions are not in themselves evil, they are the seminal
principle of all virtue.
On pillars of intellect, Spinoza reared his system. Still, solemn,
sublime like high mountains it towers upward, but is devoid of color and
warmth, and even the momentary glow that now and then starts up in his
writings, passes quickly away like the flush of evening that reddens the
snowy summits of Alpine ranges.
Spinoza's name marks a lofty peak in human history. He was a true man;
no man more fully lived his teachings. If he describes the pursuit
of knowledge as the highest virtue, he was himself a noble example of
tireless devotion in that pursuit. He was well versed in the natural
sciences, skillful in the use of the microscope, and his contributions
to the study of the inner life of man have earned him lasting
recognition. Johannes Mueller, the distinguished physiologist, has
included the third division of Spinoza's _Ethics_ in his well known work
on physiology.
Religion, however, was Spinoza's favorite theme, that religion which is
free from all passionate longings and averse to superstition of whatever
kind. He was among the first to hurl his mighty arguments against
the infallible authority of the Bible, arguments that still command
attention though two hundred years have since passed by. Miracles, he
said, are past belief, the beauty of Cosmos is far more deserving
of admiration than any so called miracle could possibly be. He
demanded--this was a great and novel claim--that the methods of natural
science be applied to the study of scripture, that the character of the
age and local surroundings be considered in determining the meaning of
each scriptural author. In brief that a natural history of the bible,
so to speak, should be attempted. He claimed that the priesthood had
falsified the very book which they professed to regard most holy.
He denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and set forth in
singularly clear and lucid language the discrepancies in which that work
abounds. He closed the treatise in which these views are laid down--the
Theologico-political Tract--with a magnificent plea for liberty of
conscience and of speech. That state alone, he says, can be free and
happy which rests on the freedom of the Individual citizen. Where the
right of free utterance is curtailed, hypocrisy and shameful conformance
flourish, and public contumely and disgrace which ought to serve as a
mete punishment for the vicious, become a halo about the head of the
most noble of men. Religion and piety, he concludes, the state has a
right to demand, but nothing hereafter shall be known as religion and
piety save the practice of equity and of a wise and helpful love.
It was a bold awakening note which thus rang out into the seventeenth
century, and theologians were bitter in their replies. The book was
confiscated and Christian curses were added to Jewish anathemas. But
they failed to affect Spinoza.
Few men have suffered as he did. Few have preserved the same equanimity
of soul in the face of adverse fortune. Twenty years he dwelt alone. For
days he did not leave his student's closet, drawing his mighty circles,
intent on those high thoughts that formed the companionship he loved.
Those that knew him well revered him. De Witt the noble statesman, De
Witt who ended his days so miserably, torn to pieces by a maddened mob,
sought his counsel. Young ardent disciples from a distance sent him
words of cheer into his solitude. His soul was pure as sunlight, his
character crystal clear. He was frugal in the extreme: a few pence a day
sufficed to sustain him. Not that he affected austere views in general,
but the deep meditations that occupied his mind left him little time
or inclination for the grosser pleasures. His sense of honor was
scrupulously nice. Again and again did he reject the munificent pensions
which his friends pressed upon him; he would be free and self-sustained
in all things. In his leisure hours he busied himself with the grinding
and polishing of optical lenses, an exercise that offered him at once
the means of support and a welcome relaxation from the severe strain
of mental effort. His temper was rarely ruffled; he was placid, genial,
childlike. When wearied with his labors he would descend to the family
of his landlord, the painter Van der Speke, and entering into the
affairs of these simple people, he found, in their unaffected converse,
the relief he sought.
He valued the peace of mind which he had purchased so dearly. When the
Elector of the Palatinate offered him the chair of philosophy at the
University of Heidelberg on condition that he would so expound his
philosophy as not to interfere with the established religion, he
declined, replying that he could teach the truth only as he saw it, and
that evil and designing men would doubtless add point and poison to his
words. Yet he was fearless. When toward the close of his career,
his life was again imperiled, the grave tranquillity of his demeanor
inspired his agitated friends with calmness and confidence.
He had gained his forty-fourth year. For half a life time he had been
fighting a treacherous disease, that preyed in secret upon his health.
His life was slowly ebbing away amidst constant suffering, yet no
complaint crossed his lips and his nearest companions were hardly
aware of what he endured. In the early part of the year 1677 one day
in February, while the family of the painter were at church the end
approached. Only a single friend was with him. Calmly as he had lived,
in the stillness of the Sunday afternoon, Spinoza passed away.
He has left a name in history that will not fade. His people cast him
out, Christianity rejected him, but he has found a wider fellowship, he
belongs to all mankind. Great hearts have throbbed responsive to his
teachings and many a sorrowful soul has owned the restful influence of
his words. He was a helper of mankind. Not surely because he solved the
ultimate problems of existence--what mortal ever will--but because he
was wise in the secret of the heart, because he taught men to appease
their fretful passions in the aspect of the infinite laws in which we
live and are.
Sacred is the hour in which we read his Ethics. From the heat and glare
of life we enter into its precincts as into the cool interior of some
hallowed temple of religion. But no idol stands there; the spirit of
truth alone presides and sanctifies the place and us. The great men
of the past we will reverence. They are mile-stones on the highway of
humanity, types of the Infinite, that has dawned in human breasts. Such
an one was he of whom I have spoken. And more and more as the light
increases among men will all that was good and great in him shine forth
to irradiate their path. And as we stand here to-day on this day of
remembrance to recall his teachings and his example, so when other
centuries shall have elapsed, the memory of Spinoza will still live,
posterity will still own him, and distant generations will name him
anew: Benedictus--Blessed!