SPINOZA
There are certain things in history which I have never been able to
understand and one of these is the amount of work done by some of the
artists and literary men of bygone ages.
The modern members of our writing guild, with typewriters and dictaphones
and secretaries and fountain pens, can turn out between three and four
thousand words a day. How did Shakespeare, with half a dozen other jobs
to distract his mind, with a scolding wife and a clumsy goose-quill,
manage to write thirty-seven plays?
Where did Lope de Vega, veteran of the Invincible Armada and a busy man
all his life, find the necessary ink and paper for eighteen hundred
comedies and five hundred essays?
What manner of man was this strange Hofkonzertmeister, Johann Sebastian
Bach, who in a little house filled with the noise of twenty children
found time to compose five oratorios, one hundred and ninety church
cantatas, three wedding cantatas, and a dozen motets, six solemn masses,
three fiddle concertos, a concerto for two violins which alone would
have made his name immortal, seven concertos for piano and orchestra,
three concertos for two pianos, two concertos for three pianos, thirty
orchestral scores and enough pieces for the flute, the harpsichord, the
organ, the bull-fiddle and the French horn to keep the average student of
music busy for the rest of his days.
Or again, by what process of industry and application could painters
like Rembrandt and Rubens produce a picture or an etching at the rate
of almost four a month during more than thirty years? How could an
humble citizen like Antonio Stradivarius turn out five hundred and forty
fiddles, fifty violoncellos and twelve violas in a single lifetime?
I am not now discussing the brains capable of devising all these plots,
hearing all these melodies, seeing all those diversified combinations
of color and line, choosing all this wood. I am just wondering at the
physical part of it. How did they do it? Didn’t they ever go to bed?
Didn’t they sometimes take a few hours off for a game of billiards? Were
they never tired? Had they ever heard of nerves?
Both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of that sort of
people. They defied all the laws of hygiene, ate and drank everything
that was bad for them, were totally unconscious of their high destinies
as members of the glorious human race, but they had an awfully good time
and their artistic and intellectual output was something terrific.
And what was true of the arts and the sciences held equally true of such
finicky subjects as theology.
Go to any of the libraries that date back two hundred years and you
will find their cellars and attics filled with tracts and homilies and
discussions and refutations and digests and commentaries in duodecimo
and octodecimo and octavo, bound in leather and in parchment and in
paper, all of them covered with dust and oblivion, but without exception
containing an enormous if useless amount of learning.
The subjects of which they treated and many of the words they used have
lost all meaning to our modern ears. But somehow or other these moldy
compilations served a very useful purpose. If they accomplished nothing
else, they at least cleared the air. For they either settled the
questions they discussed to the general satisfaction of all concerned,
or they convinced their readers that those particular problems could
not possibly be decided with an appeal to logic and argument and might
therefore just as well be dropped right then and there.
This may sound like a back-handed compliment. But I hope that critics of
the thirtieth century shall be just as charitable when they wade through
the remains of our own literary and scientific achievements.
* * * * *
Baruch de Spinoza, the hero of this chapter, did not follow the fashion
of his time in the matter of quantity. His assembled works consist of
three or four small volumes and a few bundles of letters.
But the amount of study necessary for the correct mathematical solution
of his abstract problems in ethics and philosophy would have staggered
any normally healthy man. It killed the poor consumptive who had
undertaken to reach God by way of the table of multiplication.
Spinoza was a Jew. His people, however, had never suffered the
indignities of the Ghetto. Their ancestors had settled down in the
Spanish peninsula when that part of the world was a Moorish province.
After the reconquest and the introduction of that policy of “Spain for
the Spaniard” which eventually forced that country into bankruptcy, the
Spinozas had been forced to leave their old home. They had sailed for
the Netherlands, had bought a small house in Amsterdam, had worked hard,
had saved their money and soon were known as one of the most respectable
families of the “Portuguese colony.”
If nevertheless their son Baruch was conscious of his Jewish origin,
this was due more to the training he received in his Talmud school than
to the gibes of his little neighbors. For the Dutch Republic was so
chock full of class prejudice that there was little room left for mere
race prejudice and therefore lived in perfect peace and harmony with all
the alien races that had found a refuge along the banks of the North
and Zuider Seas. And this was one of the most characteristic bits of
Dutch life which contemporary travelers never failed to omit from their
“Souvenirs de Voyage” and with good reason.
In most other parts of Europe, even at that late age, the relation
between the Jew and the non-Jew was far from satisfactory. What made the
quarrel between the two races so hopeless was the fact that both sides
were equally right and equally wrong and that both sides could justly
claim to be the victim of their opponent’s intolerance and prejudice.
In the light of the theory put forward in this book that intolerance
is merely a form of self-protection of the mob, it becomes clear that
as long as they were faithful to their own respective religions, the
Christian and the Jew must have conceded each other as enemies. In the
first place, they both of them maintained that their God was the only
true God and that all the other Gods of all the other nations were false.
In the second place, they were each other’s most dangerous commercial
rival. The Jews had come to western Europe as they had originally come
to Palestine, as immigrants in search of a new home. The labor unions
of that day, the Guilds, had made it impossible for them to take up a
trade. They had therefore been obliged to content themselves with such
economic makeshifts as pawnbroking and banking. In the Middle Ages these
two professions, which closely resembled each other, were not thought
fit occupations for decent citizens. Why the Church, until the days
of Calvin, should have felt such a repugnance towards money (except
in the form of taxes) and should have regarded the taking of interest
as a crime, is hard to understand. Usury, of course, was something
no government could tolerate and already the Babylonians, some forty
centuries before, had passed drastic laws against the money changers who
tried to make a profit out of other people’s money. In several chapters
of the Old Testament, written two thousand years later, we read how Moses
too had expressly forbidden his followers to lend money at exorbitant
rates of interest to any one except foreigners. Still later, the great
Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato, had given expression
to their great disapproval of money that was born of other money. The
Church fathers had been even more explicit upon this subject. All during
the Middle Ages the money lenders were held in profound contempt. Dante
even provided a special little alcove in his Hell for the exclusive
benefit of his banker friends.
Theoretically perhaps it could be proved that the pawnbroker and his
colleague, the man behind the “banco,” were undesirable citizens and
that the world would be better off without them. At the same time,
as soon as the world had ceased to be entirely agricultural, it was
found to be quite impossible to transact even the simplest business
operations without the use of credit. The money lender therefore had
become a necessary evil and the Jew, who (according to the views of the
Christians) was doomed to eternal damnation any way, was urged to occupy
himself with a trade which was necessary but which no respectable man
would touch.
In this way these unfortunate exiles were forced into certain unpleasant
trades which made them the natural enemy of both the rich and the poor,
and then, as soon as they had established themselves, these same enemies
turned against them, called them names, locked them up in the dirtiest
part of the city and in moments of great emotional stress, hanged them as
wicked unbelievers or burned them as renegade Christians.
It was all so terribly silly. And besides it was so stupid. These endless
annoyances and persecutions did not make the Jews any fonder of their
Christian neighbors. And as a direct result, a large volume of first-rate
intelligence was withdrawn from public circulation, thousands of bright
young fellows, who might have advanced the cause of commerce and science
and the arts, wasted their brains and energy upon the useless study of
certain old books filled with abstruse conundrums and hair-splitting
syllogisms and millions of helpless boys and girls were doomed to lead
stunted lives in stinking tenements, listening on the one hand to their
elders who told them that they were God’s chosen people who would surely
inherit the earth and all the wealth thereof, and on the other hand being
frightened to death by the curses of their neighbors who never ceased to
inform them that they were pigs and only fit for the gallows or the wheel.
To ask that people (any people) doomed to live under such adverse
circumstances shall retain a normal outlook upon life is to demand the
impossible.
Again and again the Jews were goaded into some desperate act by their
Christian compatriots and then, when white with rage, they turned upon
their oppressors, they were called “traitors” and “ungrateful villains”
and were subjected to further humiliations and restrictions. But these
restrictions had only one result. They increased the number of Jews who
had a grievance, turned the others into nervous wrecks and generally made
the Ghetto a ghastly abode of frustrated ambitions and pent-up hatreds.
Spinoza, because he was born in Amsterdam, escaped the misery which was
the birthright of most of his relatives. He went first of all to the
school maintained by his synagogue (appropriately called “the Tree of
Life”) and as soon as he could conjugate his Hebrew verbs was sent to the
learned Dr. Franciscus Appinius van den Ende, who was to drill him in
Latin and in the sciences.
Dr. Franciscus, as his name indicates, was of Catholic origin. Rumor had
it that he was a graduate of the University of Louvain and if one were to
believe the best informed deacons of the town, he was really a Jesuit in
disguise and a very dangerous person. This however was nonsense. Van den
Ende in his youth had actually spent a few years at a Catholic seminary.
But his heart was not in his work and he had left his native city of
Antwerp, had gone to Amsterdam and there had opened a private school of
his own.
He had such a tremendous flair for choosing the methods that would make
his pupils like their classical lessons, that heedless of the man’s
popish past, the Calvinistic burghers of Amsterdam willingly entrusted
their children to his care and were very proud of the fact that the
pupils of his school invariably out-hexametered and out-declined the
little boys of all other local academies.
Van den Ende taught little Baruch his Latin, but being an enthusiastic
follower of all the latest discoveries in the field of science and a
great admirer of Giordano Bruno, he undoubtedly taught the boy several
things which as a rule were not mentioned in an orthodox Jewish household.
For young Spinoza, contrary to the customs of the times, did not board
with the other boys, but lived at home. And he so impressed his family by
his profound learning that all the relations proudly pointed to him as
the little professor and liberally supplied him with pocket money. He
did not waste it upon tobacco. He used it to buy books on philosophy.
One author especially fascinated him.
That was Descartes.
René Descartes was a French nobleman born in that region between Tours
and Poitiers where a thousand years before the grandfather of Charlemagne
had stopped the Mohammedan conquest of Europe. Before he was ten years
old he had been sent to the Jesuits to be educated and he spent the next
decade making a nuisance of himself. For this boy had a mind of his own
and accepted nothing without “being shown.” The Jesuits are probably the
only people in the world who know how to handle such difficult children
and who can train them successfully without breaking their spirit.
The proof of the educational pudding is in the eating. If our modern
pedagogues would study the methods of Brother Loyola, we might have a few
Descartes of our own.
When he was twenty years old, René entered military service and went to
the Netherlands where Maurice of Nassau had so thoroughly perfected his
military system that his armies were the post-graduate school for all
ambitious young men who hoped to become generals. Descartes’ visit to
the headquarters of the Nassau prince was perhaps a little irregular.
A faithful Catholic taking service with a Protestant chieftain! It
sounds like high treason. But Descartes was interested in problems of
mathematics and artillery but not of religion or politics. Therefore
as soon as Holland had concluded a truce with Spain, he resigned his
commission, went to Munich and fought for a while under the banner of the
Catholic Duke of Bavaria.
But that campaign did not last very long. The only fighting of any
consequence then still going on was near La Rochelle, the city which the
Huguenots were defending against Richelieu. And so Descartes went back to
France that he might learn the noble art of siege-craft. But camp life
was beginning to pall upon him. He decided to give up a military career
and devote himself to philosophy and science.
He had a small income of his own. He had no desire to marry. His wishes
were few. He anticipated a quiet and happy life and he had it.
Why he chose Holland as a place of residence, I do not know. But it was
a country full of printers and publishers and bookshops and as long as
one did not openly attack the established form of government or religion,
the existing law on censorship remained a dead letter. Furthermore, as
he never learned a single word of the language of his adopted country (a
trick not difficult to a true Frenchman), Descartes was able to avoid
undesirable company and futile conversations and could give all of his
time (some twenty hours per day) to his own work.
This may seem a dull existence for a man who had been a soldier. But
Descartes had a purpose in life and it seems that he was perfectly
contented with his self-inflicted exile. He had during the course of
years become convinced that the world was still plunged in a profound
gloom of abysmal ignorance; that what was then being called science
had not even the remotest resemblance to true science, and that no
general progress would be possible until the whole ancient fabric of
error and falsehood had first of all been razed to the ground. No small
order, this. Descartes however was possessed of endless patience and at
the age of thirty he set to work to give us an entirely new system of
philosophy. Warming up to his task he added geometry and astronomy and
physics to his original program and he performed his task with such noble
impartiality of mind that the Catholics denounced him as a Calvinist and
the Calvinists cursed him for an atheist.
This clamor, if ever it reached him, did not disturb him in the least.
He quietly continued his researches and died peacefully in the city of
Stockholm, whither he had gone to talk philosophy with the Queen of
Sweden.
Among the people of the seventeenth century, Cartesianism (the name under
which his philosophies became known) made quite as much of a stir as
Darwinism was to make among the contemporaries of Queen Victoria. To be
a Cartesian in the year 1680 meant something terrible, something almost
indecent. It proclaimed one an enemy of the established order of society,
a Socinian, a low fellow who by his own confession had set himself apart
from the companionship of his respectable neighbors. This did not prevent
the majority of the intelligent classes from accepting Cartesianism as
readily and as eagerly as our grandfathers accepted Darwinism. But among
the orthodox Jews of Amsterdam, such subjects were never even mentioned.
Cartesianism was not mentioned in either Talmud or Torah. Hence it did
not exist. And when it became apparent that it existed just the same in
the mind of one Baruch de Spinoza, it was a foregone conclusion that said
Baruch de Spinoza would himself cease to exist as soon as the authorities
of the synagogue had been able to investigate the case and take official
action.
The Amsterdam synagogue had at that moment passed through a severe
crisis. When little Baruch was fifteen years old, another Portuguese
exile by the name of Uriel Acosta had arrived in Amsterdam, had forsworn
Catholicism, which he had accepted under a threat of death, and had
returned to the faith of his fathers. But this fellow Acosta had not been
an ordinary Jew. He was a gentleman accustomed to carry a feather in his
hat and a sword at his side. To him the arrogance of the Dutch rabbis,
trained in the German and Polish schools of learning, had come as a most
unpleasant surprise, and he had been too proud and too indifferent to
hide his opinions.
In a small community like that, such open defiance could not possibly be
tolerated. A bitter struggle had followed. On the one side a solitary
dreamer, half prophet, half hidalgo. On the other side the merciless
guardians of the law.
It had ended in tragedy.
First of all Acosta had been denounced to the local police as the author
of certain blasphemous pamphlets which denied the immortality of the
soul. This had got him into trouble with the Calvinist ministers. But
the matter had been straightened out and the charge had been dropped.
Thereupon the synagogue had excommunicated the stiff-necked rebel and had
deprived him of his livelihood.
For months thereafter the poor man had wandered through the streets
of Amsterdam until destitution and loneliness had driven him back to
his own flock. But he was not re-admitted until he had first of all
publicly apologized for his evil conduct and had then suffered himself
to be whipped and kicked by all the members of the congregation. These
indignities had unbalanced his mind. He had bought a pistol and had blown
his brains out.
This suicide had caused a tremendous lot of talk among the principal
citizens of Amsterdam. The Jewish community felt that it could not risk
the chance of another public scandal. When it became evident that the
most promising pupil of the “Tree of Life” had been contaminated by the
new heresies of Descartes, a direct attempt was made to hush things up.
Baruch was approached and was offered a fixed annual sum if he would give
his word that he would be good, would continue to show himself in the
synagogue and would not publish or say anything against the law.
Now Spinoza was the last man to consider such a compromise. He curtly
refused to do anything of the sort. In consequence whereof he was duly
read out of his own church according to that famous ancient Formula of
Damnation which leaves very little to the imagination and goes back all
the way to the days of Jericho to find the appropriate number of curses
and execrations.
As for the victim of these manifold maledictions, he remained quietly in
his room and read about the occurrence in next day’s paper. Even when an
attempt was made upon his life by an over zealous follower of the law, he
refused to leave town.
This came as a great blow to the prestige of the Rabbis who apparently
had invoked the names of Joshua and Elisha in vain and who saw themselves
publicly defied for the second time in less than half a dozen years. In
their anxiety they went so far as to make an appeal to the town hall.
They asked for an interview with the Burgomasters and explained that this
Baruch de Spinoza whom they had just expelled from their own church was
really a most dangerous person, an agnostic who refused to believe in God
and who therefore ought not to be tolerated in a respectable Christian
community like the city of Amsterdam.
Their lordships, after their pleasant habit, washed their hands of the
whole affair and referred the matter to a sub-committee of clergymen. The
sub-committee studied the question, discovered that Baruch de Spinoza had
done nothing that could be construed as an offense against the ordinances
of the town, and so reported to their lordships. At the same time
they considered it to be good policy for members of the cloth to stand
together and therefore they suggested that the Burgomasters ask this
young man, who seemed to be so very independent, to leave Amsterdam for a
couple of months and not to return until the thing had blown over.
From that moment on the life of Spinoza was as quiet and uneventful as
the landscape upon which he looked from his bedroom windows. He left
Amsterdam and hired a small house in the village of Rijnsberg near
Leiden. He spent his days polishing lenses for optical instruments and
at night he smoked his pipe and read or wrote as the spirit moved him.
He never married. There was rumor of a love affair between him and a
daughter of his former Latin teacher, van den Ende. But as the child was
ten years old when Spinoza left Amsterdam, this does not seem very likely.
He had several very loyal friends and at least twice a year they offered
to give him a pension that he might devote all his time to his studies.
He answered that he appreciated their good intentions but that he
preferred to remain independent and with the exception of an allowance
of eighty dollars a year from a rich young Cartesian, he never touched
a penny and spent his days in the respectable poverty of the true
philosopher.
He had a chance to become a professor in Germany, but he declined.
He received word that the illustrious King of Prussia would be happy
to become his patron and protector, but he answered nay and remained
faithful to the quiet routine of his pleasant exile.
After a number of years in Rijnsberg he moved to the Hague. He had never
been very strong and the particles of glass from his half-finished lenses
had affected his lungs.
He died quite suddenly and alone in the year 1677.
To the intense disgust of the local clergy, not less than six private
carriages belonging to prominent members of the court followed the
“atheist” to his grave. And when two hundred years later a statue was
unveiled to his memory, the police reserves had to be called out to
protect the participants in this solemn celebration against the fury of a
rowdy crowd of ardent Calvinists.
So much for the man. What about his influence? Was he merely another
of those industrious philosophers who fill endless books with endless
theories and speak a language which drove even Omar Khayyam to an
expression of exasperated annoyance?
No, he was not.
Neither did he accomplish his results by the brilliancy of his wit or the
plausible truth of his theories. Spinoza was great mainly by force of his
courage. He belonged to a race that knew only one law, a set of hard and
fast rules laid down for all times in the dim ages of a long forgotten
past, a system of spiritual tyranny created for the benefit of a class of
professional priests who had taken it upon themselves to interpret this
sacred code.
He lived in a world in which the idea of intellectual freedom was almost
synonymous with political anarchy.
He knew that his system of logic must offend both Jews and Gentiles.
But he never wavered.
He approached all problems as universal problems. He regarded them
without exception as the manifestation of an omnipresent will and
believed them to be the expression of an ultimate reality which would
hold good on Doomsday as it had held good at the hour of creation.
And in this way he greatly contributed to the cause of human tolerance.
Like Descartes before him, Spinoza discarded the narrow boundaries laid
down by the older forms of religion and boldly built himself a new system
of thought based upon the rocks of a million stars.
By so doing he made man what man had not been since the days of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, a true citizen of the universe.