Men are so made as to resent nothing more impatiently than to be
treated as criminal on account of opinions which they deem true,
and charged as guilty for simply what wakes their affection to God
and men. Hence, laws about opinions are aimed not at the base but
at the noble, and tend not to restrain the evil-minded but rather
to irritate the good, and can not be enforced without great peril
to the Government.... What evil can be imagined greater for a
State, than that honorable men, because they have thoughts of their
own and can not act a lie, are sent as culprits into exile! What
more baneful than that men, for no guilt or wrongdoing, but for the
generous largeness of their mind, should be taken for enemies and
led off to death, and that the torture-bed, the terror of the bad,
should become, to the signal shame of authority, the finest stage
for the public spectacle of endurance and virtue!
--_Benedict Spinoza_
[Illustration: SPINOZA]
The word philosophy means the love of truth: "philo," love; "soph,"
truth; or, if you prefer, the love of that which is reasonable and
right. Philosophy refers directly to the life of man--how shall we live
so as to get the most out of this little Earth-Journey!
Life is our heritage--we all have so much vitality at our disposal--what
shall we do with it?
Truth can be proved in just one way, and no other--that is, by living
it. You know what is good, only by trying. Truth, for us, is that which
brings good results--happiness or reasonable content, health, peace and
prosperity. These things are all relative--none are final, and they are
good only as they are mixed in right proportion with other things.
Oxygen, we say, is life, but it is also death, for it attacks every
living thing with pitiless persistency. Hydrogen is good, but it makes
the very hottest fire known, and may explode if you try to confine it.
Prosperity is excellent, but too much is very dangerous to most folks;
and to seek happiness as a final aim is like loving love as a
business--the end is desolation, death. Good health is best secured and
retained by those who are not anxious about health. Absolute good can
never be known, for always and forever creeps in the suspicion that if
we had acted differently a better result might have followed.
And that which is good for one is not necessarily good for another.
But there are certain general rules of conduct which apply to all men,
and to sum these up and express them in words is the business of the
philosopher. As all men live truth, in degree, and all men express some
truth in language, so to that extent all men are philosophers; but by
common assent, we give the title only to the men who make other men
think for themselves.
Whistler refers to Velasquez as "a painter's painter." John Wesley said,
"No man is worthy to be called a teacher, unless he be a teacher of
teachers." The great writer is the one who inspires writers. And in this
book I will not refer to a man as a philosopher unless he has inspired
philosophers.
Preachers and priests in the employ of a denomination are attorneys for
the defense. God is not found in a theological seminary, for very seldom
is the seminary seminal--it galvanizes the dead rather than vitalizes
the germs of thought in the living. No man understands theology--it is
not intended to be understood; it is merely believed. Most colleges are
places where is taught the gentle art of sophistication; and memorizing
the theories of great men gone passes for knowledge.
Words are fluid and change their meaning with the years and according to
the mind and mood of the hearer. A word means all you read into it, and
nothing more. The word "soph" once had a high and honorable distinction,
but now it is used to point a moral, and the synonym of sophomore is
soft.
Originally the sophist was a lover of truth; then he became a lover of
words that concealed truth, and the chief end of his existence was to
balance a feather on his nose and keep three balls in the air for the
astonishment and admiration of the bystanders.
Education is something else.
Education is growth, development, life in abundance, creation.
We grow only through exercise. The faculties we use become strong, and
those we fail to use are taken away from us.
This exercise of our powers through which growth is attained affords the
finest gratification that mortals know. To think, reason, weigh, sift,
decide and act--this is life. It means health, sanity and length of
days. Those live longest who live most.
The end of college education to the majority of students and parents is
to secure a degree, and a degree is valuable only to the man who needs
it. Visiting the office of the "Outlook," a weekly, religious newspaper,
I noticed that the titles, Rev., Prof, and Dr., and the degrees, M. D.,
D. D., LL. D., Ph. D., were carefully used by the clerks in addressing
envelopes and wrappers. And I said to the manager, "Why this misuse of
time and effort? The ink thus wasted should be sold and the proceeds
given to the poor!" And the man replied, "To omit these titles and
degrees would cost us half our subscription-list." And so I assume that
man is a calculating animal, not a thinking one.
And the point of this sermonette is that truth is not monopolized by
universities and colleges; nor must we expect much from those who parade
degrees and make professions. It is one thing to love truth and it is
another thing to lust after honors.
The larger life--the life of love, health, self-sufficiency, usefulness
and expanding power--this life in abundance is often taught best out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings. It is not esoteric, nor hidden in
secret formulas, nor locked in languages old and strange.
No one can compute how much the bulwarked learned ones have blocked the
path of wisdom. Socrates, the barefoot philosopher, did more good than
all the Sophists with their schools. Diogenes, who lived in a tub,
searched in vain for an honest man, owned nothing but a blanket and a
bowl, and threw the bowl away when he saw a boy drinking out of his
hand, even yet makes men think, and so blesses and benefits the race.
Jesus of Nazareth, with no place to lay his tired head, associating with
publicans and sinners, and choosing his closest companions from among
ignorant fishermen, still lives in the affections of millions of people,
a molding force for good untold. Friedrich Froebel, who first preached
the propensity to play as a pedagogic dynamo, as the tides of the sea
could be used to turn the countless wheels of trade, is yet only
partially accepted, but has influenced every teacher in Christendom and
stamped his personality upon the walls of schoolrooms unnumbered. Then
comes Richard Wagner, the political outcast, writing from exile the
music that serves as a mine for much of our modern composing, marching
down the centuries to the solemn chant of his "Pilgrims' Chorus";
William Morris, Oxford graduate and uncouth workingman in blouse and
overalls, arrested in the streets of London for haranguing crowds on
Socialism, let go with a warning, on suspended sentence--canceled only
by death--making his mark upon the walls of every well-furnished house
in England or America; Jean Francois Millet, starved out in art-loving
Paris, his pictures refused at the Salon, living next door to abject
want in Barbizon, dubbed the "wild man of the woods," dead and turned to
dust, his pictures commanding such sums as Paris never before paid; Walt
Whitman, issuing his book at his own expense, publishers having refused
it, this book excluded from the mails, as Wanamaker immortalized himself
by serving a like sentence on Tolstoy; Walt Whitman, riding on top of a
Broadway 'bus all day, happy in the great solitude of bustling city
streets, sending his barbaric yawp down the ages, singing paeans to those
who fail, chants to Death--strong deliverer--and giving courage to a
fear-stricken world; Thoreau, declining to pay the fee of five dollars
for his Harvard diploma "because it wasn't worth the price," later
refusing to pay poll-tax and sent to jail, thus missing, possibly, the
chance of finding that specimen of Victoria regia on Concord
River--Thoreau, most virile of all the thinkers of his day, inspiring
Emerson, the one man America could illest spare; Spinoza, the
intellectual hermit, asking nothing, and giving everything--all these
worked their philosophy up into life and are the type of men who jostle
the world out of its ruts--creators all, one with Deity, sons of God,
saviors of the race.
* * * * *
Washington Irving once spoke of Spain as the Paradise of Jews. But it
must be borne in mind that he wrote the words in Granada, which was
essentially a Moorish province. The Moors and the Jews are both Semitic
in origin--they trace back to a common ancestry. It was the Moslem Moors
that welcomed the Jews in both Venetia and Spain, not the Christians.
The wealth, energy and practical business sense of the Jews recommended
them to the grandees of Leon, Aragon and Castile. To the Jews they
committed their exchequer, the care of their health, the setting of
their jewels, and the fashioning of their finery. In this genial
atmosphere many of the Jews grew great in the study of science,
literature, history, philosophy and all that makes for mental
betterment. They increased in numbers, in opulence and in culture. Their
thrift and success set them apart as a mark for hate and envy.
It was a period of ominous peace, of treacherous repose.
A senseless and fanatical cry went up, that the Moors--the
infidels--must be driven from Spain. The iniquities and inhuman
barbarities visited upon the Mohammedan Moors would make a book in
itself, but let it go at this: Ferdinand and Isabella drove the
Mohammedans from Spain. In the struggle, the Jews were overlooked--and
anyway, Christians do not repudiate the Old Testament, and if the Jews
would accept Christ, why, they could remain!
It looked easy to the gracious King and Queen of Spain--it was really
generous: two religions were unnecessary, and Christianity was beautiful
and right. If the Jews would become Catholics, all barriers would be
removed--the Jews would be recognized as citizens and every walk of life
would be open to them.
This manifesto to the Jews is still quoted by Churchmen to show the
excellence, tolerance, patience and love of the Spanish rulers. Turn
your synagogues over to the Catholics--come and be one with us--we will
all worship the one God together--come, these open arms invite--no
distinctions--no badges--no preferences--no prejudices--come!
In quoting the edict it is not generally stated that the Jews were given
thirty days to make the change.
The Jews who loved their faith fled; the weak succumbed, or pretended
to. If a Jew wished to flee the country he could, but he must leave all
his property behind. This caused many to remain and profess
Christianity, only awaiting a time when their property could be turned
into gold or jewels and be borne upon the person. This fondness for
concrete wealth is a race instinct implanted in the Jewish mind by the
inbred thought that possibly tomorrow he must fly.
After attending service at a Catholic Church, Jews would go home and in
secret read the Talmud and in whispers chant the Psalms of David.
Laws were passed making such action a penal offense--spies were
everywhere. No secret can be kept long, and in the Province of Seville
over two thousand Jews were hanged or burned in a single year. When
Ferdinand and Isabella gave Torquemada, Deza and Lucio orders to make
good Catholics of all Jews, they had not the faintest idea what would be
the result. Every Jew that was hurried to the stake was first stripped
of his property.
No Jew was safe, especially if he was rich--his sincerity or insincerity
had really little to do in the matter. The prisons were full, the fagots
crackled, the streets ran blood, and all in the name of the gentle
Christ.
Then for a time the severity relaxed, for the horror had spent itself.
But early in the Seventeenth Century the same edicts were again put
forth.
Fortunately, priesthood had tried its mailed hand on the slow and
sluggish Dutch, with the result that the Spaniards were driven from the
Netherlands. Holland was the home of freedom. Amsterdam became a Mecca
for the oppressed. The Jews flocked thither, and among others who, in
Sixteen Hundred Thirty-one, landed on the quay was a young Jew by the
name of Michael d'Espinoza. With him was a Moorish girl that he had
rescued from the clutch of a Spanish grandee, in whose house she had
been kept a prisoner.
By a happy accident, this beautiful girl of seventeen had escaped from
her tormentors and was huddling, sobbing, in an alley as the young Jew
came hurrying by on his way to the ship that was to bear him to
freedom. It was near day-dawn--there was no time to lose--the young man
only knew that the girl, like himself, was in imminent peril. A small
boat waited near--soon they were safely secreted in the hold of the
ship. Before sundown the tide had carried the ship to sea, and Portugal
was but a dark line on the horizon.
Other refugees were on board the boat; they came from their
hiding-places--and the second day out a refugee rabbi called a meeting
on deck. It was a solemn service of thanksgiving and the songs of Zion
were sung, the first time for some in many months, and only friends and
the great, sobbing, salt sea listened.
The tears of the Moorish girl were now dried--the horror of the future
had gone with the black memories of the past. Other women, not quite so
poor, contributed to her wardrobe, and there and then, after she had
been accepted into the Jewish faith, she and Michael d'Espinoza, aged
twenty-two, were married.
The ship arrived at Amsterdam in safety. In a year, on November
Twenty-fourth, Sixteen Hundred Thirty-two, in a little stone house that
still stands on the canal bank, was born Benedict Spinoza.
* * * * *
Benedict Spinoza was brought up in the faith and culture of his people.
Beyond his religious training at the synagogue, there was a Jewish High
School at Amsterdam which he attended. This school might compare very
favorably with our modern schools, in that it included a certain degree
of manual training. Besides this he had received special instruction
from several learned rabbis. In matters of true education, the Jews have
ever been in advance of the Gentile world--they bring their children up
to be useful. The father of Benedict was a maker of lenses for
spectacles, and at this trade the boy was very early set to work. Again
and again in the writings of Spinoza, we find the argument that every
man should have a trade and earn his living with his hands, not by
writing, speaking or philosophizing. If you can earn a living at your
trade, you thus make your mind free.
This early idea of usefulness led to a sympathy with another religious
body, of which there were quite a number of members in Holland: the
Mennonites. This sect was founded by Menno Simons, a Frieslander,
contemporary of Luther; only this man swung on further from Catholicism
than Luther and declared that a paid priesthood was what made all the
trouble. Religion to him was a matter of individual inspiration. When an
institution was formed, built on man's sense of relation with his Maker,
property purchased, and paid priests employed, instantly there was a
pollution of the well of life. It became a money-making scheme, and a
grand clutch for place and power followed: it really ceased to be
religion at all, so long as we define religion in its spiritual sense.
"A priest," said Menno, "is a man who thrives on the sacred relations
that exist between man and God, and is little better than a person who
would live on the love-emotions of men and women."
This certainly was bold language, but to be exact, it was persecution
that forced the expression. The Catholics had placed an interdict on all
services held by Protestant pastors, and the deprivation proved to Menno
that paid preaching and costly churches and trappings were really not
necessary at all. Man could go to God without them, and pray in secret.
Spirituality is not dependent on either church or priest.
The Mennonites in Holland escaped theological criticism by disclaiming
to be a church, and calling their institution a college, and themselves
"Collegiants."
All the Mennonites asked was to be let alone. They were plain,
unpretentious people, who worked hard, lived frugally, refused to make
oaths, to accept civil office, or to go to war. They are a variant of
the impulse that makes Quakers and all those peculiar people known as
Primitive Christians, who mark the swinging of the pendulum from pride
and pretense to simplicity and a life of modest usefulness.
The sincerity, truthfulness and virtue of the Mennonites so impressed
itself upon even the ruthless Corsican, that he made them exempt from
conscription.
Before Spinoza was twenty, he had come into acquaintanceship with these
plain people. His relationship with the rabbis and learned men of Israel
had given him a culture that the Mennonites did not possess; but these
plain people, by the earnestness of their lives, showed him that the
science of theology was not a science at all. Nobody understands
theology: it is not meant to be understood--it is for belief. Spinoza
compared the Mennonites, who confessed they knew nothing, but hoped
much, to the rabbis, who pretended they knew all. His praise of the
Mennonites, and his criticisms of the growing love for power in Judaism,
were carried to the Jewish authorities by some young men who had come to
him in the guise of learners. Moreover, the report was abroad that he
was to marry a Gentile--the daughter of Van den Ende, the infidel.
On order, he appeared at the synagogue, and defended his position. His
ability in argument, his knowledge of Jewish law, his insight into the
lessons of history, were alarming to the assembled rabbis. The young man
was quiet, gentle, but firm. He expressed the belief that God might
possibly have revealed Himself to other peoples beside the Jews.
"Then you are not a Jew!" was the answer.
"Yes, I am a Jew, and I love my faith."
"But it is not all to you?"
"I confess that occasionally I have found what seems to be truth
outside of the Law."
The rabbis tore their raiment in mingled rage and surprise at the young
man's temerity.
Spinoza did not withdraw from the Jewish Congregation--he was thrust
out. Moreover, a fanatical Jew, in the warmth of his religious zeal,
attempted to kill him. Spinoza escaped, his clothing cut through by a
dagger-thrust, close to the heart.
The curse of Israel was upon him--his own brothers and sisters refused
him shelter, his father turned against him, and again was the icy
unkindness of kinsmen made manifest. The tribe of Spinoza lives in
history, saved from the fell clutch of oblivion by the man it denied
with an oath and pushed in bitterness from its heart. Spinoza fled to
his friends, the Mennonites, plain market-gardeners who lived a few
miles out of the city.
Spinoza had not meant to leave the Jews--the racial instinct was strong
in him, and the pride of his people colored his character to the last.
But the attempts to bribe him and coerce him into a following of
fanatical law, when this law did not appeal to his commonsense, forced
him into a position that his enemies took for innate perversity. When an
eagle is hatched in a barnyard brood and mounts on soaring pinions
toward the sun, it is always cursed and vilified because it does not
remain at home and scratch in the compost. Its flight skyward is
construed as proof of its vile nature.
How can people who do not think, and can not think, and therefore have
no thoughts to express, sympathize with one whose highest joy comes from
the expression of his thought?
Deprive a thinker of the privilege to think and you take from him his
life. The joy of existence lies in self-expression. What if we should
order the painter to quit his canvas, the sculptor to lay aside his
tools, the farmer to leave the soil? Do these things, and you do no more
than you do when you force a thinker to follow in the groove that dead
men have furrowed. The thirst for knowledge must be slaked or the soul
sickens and slow death follows.
In Spinoza's time the literature of Greece and Rome was locked in the
Latin language, which the Jews were forbidden to acquire. Young Spinoza
longed to know what Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Vergil had
taught, but these authors were considered anathema by the rabbinical
councils. Spinoza desired to be honest, and so asked for a special
dispensation in his favor, as he was to be a teacher--could he study the
Latin language?
And the answer was, "Read your Joshua, first chapter and eighth verse,
'This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt
meditate therein day and night.'"
From this time on Spinoza was more or less under the ban, and rumors of
his heresy were rife. It is possible, if it had not been for one
person, that the growing desire for knowledge, the reaching out for
better things, the dissatisfaction with his environment, might have
passed in safety and the restless young rabbi slipped back into the
conventional Jew. Youth always has its periods of unrest--sometimes
more, sometimes less.
Spinoza had made the acquaintance of Van den Ende, a teacher of Greek
and Latin, an erratic, argumentative rationalist, who had his say on all
topics of the time, and fixed his place in history by being shot as a
revolutionary, just outside the walls of the Bastile.
But at this time Van den Ende was fairly prosperous and Amsterdam was
the freest city in Christendom.
Van den Ende had a daughter, Clara Maria, a little younger than Spinoza,
who surely was a most superior woman. She was the companion of her
father in his studies. It speaks well for the father and it speaks well
for the daughter that they were comrades and that his highest thought
was expressed to her. I can conceive of no finer joy coming to a man
than, as his hair whitens, to have a daughter who understands him at his
best, who enters into his life, sympathizes with his ideals, ministers
to his mental needs, who is his companion and friend. Only a great man
ever has such a daughter. Madame De Stael, who delighted in being called
"the daughter of Necker," was such a woman, and the splendor of her mind
was no less her father's glory than was the fact that he was the
greatest financier of his time.
Clara Van den Ende was her father's helper and companion, and when he
was busied in other tasks she took charge of his classes.
Auerbach has written a charming story with Clara Van den Ende and
Spinoza as a central theme. In the tale is pictured with skilful
psychology the awakening of the sleeping soul of Spinoza as he was
introduced from a cheerless home, devoid of art and freedom, into the
beauties of undraped Greece and the fine atmosphere of a forum where
nothing human was considered alien.
From a love for Vergil, Cicero and Horace, to a love for each other, was
a very natural sequence. A growing indifference for the censure of
Judaism was quite a natural result. Auerbach would have us believe that
no man alone ever stood out against the revilings of kinsmen and the
stupidity of sectarians: we move in the line of least resistance and
only a very great passion makes it possible for a man calmly to face the
contumely of an angry world.
Zangwill, in his vivid sketch, "The Maker of Lenses," makes this single
love-episode in the life of Spinoza the controlling impulse of his life,
probably reasoning on the premise that men who mark epochs are ever and
always, without exception, those with the love nature strongly implanted
in their hearts. So thoroughly does Zangwill believe in the one passion
of Spinoza's life, that a score of years after the chief incident of it
had transpired, he pictures the philosopher trembling at mention of the
woman's name, coughing to conceal his agitation and clutching the
doorpost for support. And this a man who smilingly faced a mob that
howled for his life, and was only moved to philosophize on the nature of
human intellect when a flying stone grazed his cheek!
But the lady had ambitions--the lens-maker was penniless, and probably
always would be--his passion was passive--he lacked the show and dash
that made other women jealous. And so Oldenburg, a rival with love and
jewels, won the heart that could not be won by love alone. That the lady
soon knew she had erred did not help her case--Spinoza loved his ideal,
and he had thought it was the woman.
* * * * *
Follow Zangwill's stories of the Ghetto and your heart is wrung by the
injustice, cruelty and inhumanity visited upon the Jews by the people
who worship a Jew as God and make daily supplications to a Jewess.
But read between the lines and you will see that Israel Zangwill, child
of the Ghetto, knows that the Peculiar People are peculiar through
persecution, and not necessarily so through innate nature. Zangwill
knows that no religion is pure except in its stage of persecution, and
that Judaism, grown rich and powerful, would oppress and has oppressed.
Martyr and persecutor shift places easily.
The Jew arrives in a city at night, and in the morning takes down the
shutters and is doing business. The Jew winds his way into the life of
every city and becomes at once an integral part of it--a part, yet
separate and distinct, for his social and religious life is not colored
by his environment.
Children imitate unconsciously. The golden rule is not natural to
children: it has to be taught them. They do unto others as others have
done unto them, and have no question as to right or wrong. We are all
children, and have to think hard before we are conscious of any feeling
of the brotherhood of man. As soon as the Jews relaxed in Amsterdam--got
their breath, and felt secure--they did unto others as they had been
done by--they persecuted.
A Jew must be a Jew, and as they had been watched with suspicion in
Spain and Portugal by the Christians, so now they watched each other for
heresies. They compelled strictest obedience to every form and ceremony.
To the Jew the Law forms the firmament above and the earth beneath. All
is law to him, and his part and work in this life is obedience to law.
The Jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. The Jew is
bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on
the south by law. There are set rules and laws that govern his getting
up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. There
is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the Mishna and
Gemara. Being learned in the Law means being learned in the proper way
to kill chickens, to dress ducks, wear your vestments, go to prayers,
and what to say when you meet two Christians in an alley. If a Jew
quarrels with a neighbor and goes to his Rabbi for advice, the learned
man gets down his Talmud and finds the page. The relation of wife and
husband, child and parent, brother and sister, lover and sweetheart, are
covered by law, fixed, immovable. The learned men of Judah are men
learned in the Law, not learned in the science of life, and commonsense.
When these learned men meet they argue for six days and nights together
as to interpretations of the Law concerning whether it is right to make
a fire in your cook-stove on the Sabbath if a Christian is starving for
food on your doorstep, or what will become of you if you eat pork to
save your life.
Rational Jews are those who do what they think is right, but Orthodox
Jews are those who do what the Law prescribes. When Jesus plucked the
ears of corn on the Sabbath day, he proved himself a Rational Jew--he
set his own opinion higher than Law and thereby made himself an outcast.
Jewish Law provides curdling curses for just such offenses.
Plato's Republic was a scheme of life regulated absolutely by law; every
contingency was provided for. And Plato's plan was founded on the
hypothesis that it is the duty of wise men to do the thinking and
regulate the conduct of those who are supposed not to be wise enough to
think and to act for themselves. But Plato's idea lacked the "Thus saith
the Lord," with which Moses and Aaron enforced their edicts. So Plato's
Republic is still on paper, for no set of rules minutely regulating
conduct has ever been enforced except as the ruler made his subjects
believe he received his instructions direct from God.
Yet all the Jewish Laws are founded with an eye to a sanitary and
hygienic good--they are built on the basis of expediency. And that rule
of the Gemara which provides that if you have gravy on the table, you
can not also have butter, without sin, seems more of a move in the
direction of economics than a matter of ethics. Laws are good for the
people who believe that a blind obedience to a good thing is better than
to work your way alone and find out for yourself what is best and
right. The Jewish Law is based, like all religious codes, on the
assumption that man by nature is vile, and really prefers wrong to
right.
The thought that all men prefer the good, and think at the moment they
are doing what is best, no matter what they do, was first sharply and
clearly expressed by Spinoza. Truth, he said, could only be reached
through freedom--a man must even have the privilege of thinking wrong so
long as his actions do not jeopardize the life and immediate safety of
others.
For a people whose every act is governed by fixed laws there can be no
progression. Mistakes are the rungs of the ladder by which we reach the
skies. The man who allows the dead to regulate his life, and accepts
their thinking as final, satisfied to repeat what he is taught, remains
forever in the lowlands. His wings are leaden.
The Jews--most law-bound and priest-ridden of all peoples--are at home
everywhere because they have no home. They mix in the life of every
nation and remain forever separate and apart. They will run with you,
ride with you, trade with you, but they will not eat with you nor pray
with you. They build no Altars to the Unknown God, out of courtesy to
visitors and guests from distant climes. Mohammedans recognize the
divinity of Jesus, the Buddhists look upon him as one of many Christs,
the Universalist sees good in every faith, but the Jew regards all other
religions than his own as pestilence. If by chance, or in the line of
business, he finds himself in a heathen temple or Christian Church, his
Gemara orders that he shall present himself at his own temple for
purification.
Read Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and you behold on every page
curses, revilings, threats and bitter scorn for all outside the pale.
Orders by Jehovah to burn, kill and utterly destroy are frequent. And we
must remember that every people make their god in their own image. A
man's God is himself at his best; his devil is himself at his worst.
The very expression, "The Chosen People," would be an insult to every
man outside the pale, were it not such a petulant and childish boast
that its serious assumption makes us smile.
Well does Moses Mendelssohn, the Jew, say: "The Ghetto is an arrangement
first contrived by Jews for keeping infidels out of a sacred precinct.
When the infidels were strong enough they turned the tables and forbade
the Jews to leave their Ghetto except at certain hours. For the misery,
poverty and squalor of the Ghetto the Jew is not to blame--if he could,
he would have the Ghetto a place of opulence, beauty and all that makes
for the good. Every undesirable thing he would bestow on the outsider.
In the twilight days of Jewish power, the Jew, with bigotry, arrogance
and intolerance unsurpassed, regulated the infidels and fixed their
goings and comings as they now do his, and he would do it again if he
had the power. The Jew never changes--once a Jew always a Jew."
This was written by a man who was not only a Jew, but a man. He was a
Jew in pride of race--in racial instinct, but he was great enough to
know that all men are God's children, and that to set up a fixed,
dogmatic standard regulating every act of life has its serious
penalties. He was a Jew so big that he knew that the cruelty and
inhumanity visited upon the Jews by Christians was first taught to these
Christians by Jews--it is all in the Old Testament. The villainy you
have taught me I will execute. It shall go hard, but I will better the
instruction.
The Christians who had persecuted Jews were really orthodox Jews in
disguise, and were actuated more by the Jewish Law expressed in the Old
Testament, than by the life of Jesus, who placed man above the Sabbath
and taught that the good is that which serves.
And so Benedict Spinoza, the Rabbi, gentle, spiritual, kind, heir to the
Jewish faith, learned in all the refinements of Jewish Law, knowing
minutely the history of the race, knowing that for which the curses of
Judaism were reserved, perceiving with unblinking eyes the absurdity and
folly of all dogmatic belief, gradually withdrew from practising and
following "Law," preferring his own commonsense. There were threats,
then attempts to bribe, and again threats and finally excommunication
and curses so terrible that if they were carried out, a man would walk
the earth an exile--unknown by brothers and sisters, shunned by the
mother that gave him birth, a moral leper to his father, despised,
rejected, turned away, spit upon by every being of his kind.
And here is the document:
By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the saints, we
anathematize, cut off, curse, and execrate Baruch Spinoza, in the
presence of these sacred books with the six hundred and thirteen
precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith
Joshua anathematized Jericho; with the cursing wherewith Elisha
cursed the children; and with all the cursings which are written in
the Book of the Law; cursed be he by day, and cursed by night;
cursed when he lieth down, and cursed when he riseth up; cursed
when he goeth out, and cursed when he cometh in; the Lord pardon
him never; the wrath and fury of the Lord burn upon this man, and
bring upon him all the curses which are written in the Book of the
Law. The Lord blot out his name under heaven. The Lord set him
apart for destruction from all the tribes of Israel, with all the
curses of the firmament which are written in the Book of the Law.
There shall no one speak to him, no man write to him, no man show
him any kindness, no man stay under the same roof with him, no man
come nigh him.
* * * * *
When the Jewish congregation had placed its ban upon Spinoza, he dropped
the Jewish name Baruch, for the Latin Benedictus. In this action he
tokened his frame of mind: he was going to persist in his study of the
Latin language, and his new name stood for peace or blessing, just as
the other had, being essentially the same as our word benediction. The
man's purpose was firm. To perfect himself in Latin, he began a study of
Descartes' "Meditations," and this led to proving the Cartesian
philosophy by a geometrical formula. In his quiet home among the simple
Mennonites, five miles from Amsterdam, there gradually grew up around
him a body of students to whom he read his writings. The Cartesian
philosophy swings around the proposition that only through universal
doubt can we at last reach truth. Spinoza soon went beyond this and made
his plea for faith in a universal Good.
Five years went by--years of work at his lenses, helping his friends in
their farm work, and several hours daily devoted to study and writing.
Spinoza's manuscripts were handed around by his pupils. He wrote for
them, and in making truth plain to them he made it clear to himself. The
Jews at Amsterdam kept track of his doings and made charges to the
Protestant authorities to the effect that Spinoza was guilty of treason,
and his presence a danger to the State. Spies were about, and their
presence becoming known to the Mennonites, caused uneasiness. To
relieve his friends of a possible unpleasant situation, the gentle
philosopher packed up his scanty effects and moved away. He went to the
village of Voorburg, two miles from The Hague.
Here he lived for seven years, often for six months not going farther
than three miles from home. He studied, worked and wrote, and his
writings were sent out to his few friends who circulated them among
friends of theirs, and in time the manuscripts came back soiled and
dog-eared, proof that some one had read them. Persecution binds human
hearts, and at this time there was a brotherhood of thinkers throughout
the capitals and University towns of Europe. Spinoza's name became known
gradually to these--they grew to look for his monthly contribution, and
in many places when his manuscript arrived little bands of earnest
students would meet, and the manuscript would be read and discussed. The
interdict placed on free thought made it attractive. Spinoza became
recognized by the esoteric few as one of the world's great thinkers,
although the good people with whom he lived knew him only as a model
lodger, who kept regular hours and made little trouble. Occasionally
visitors would come from a distance and remain for hours discussing such
abstract themes as the freedom of the will or the nature of the
over-soul. And these visitors caused the rustic neighbors to grow
curious, and we find Spinoza moving into the city and renting a modest
back room. By a curious chance, his landlady, fifty years before, had
been a servant in the household of Grotius, and once had locked that
great man in a trunk and escorted him, right side up, across the border
into Switzerland to escape the heresy-hunters who were looking for human
kindling. This kind landlady, now grown old, and living largely in the
past, saw points of resemblance between her philosophic boarder and the
great Grotius, and soon waxed boastful to the neighbors. Spinoza noticed
that he was being pointed out on the streets. His record had followed
him. The Jews hated him because he was a renegade; the Christians hated
him because he was a Jew, and both Catholics and Protestants shunned him
when they ought not, and greeted him with howls when they should have
let him alone.
He again moved his lodgings to the suburbs of the city, where he lived
with the family of Van der Spijck, a worthy Dutch painter who smoked his
pipe in calm indifference to the Higher Criticism. For their quiet and
studious lodger Van der Spijck and his wife had a profound regard. They
did not understand him, but they believed in him. Often he would go to
church with them and coming home would discuss the sermon with them at
length. The Lutheran pastor who came to call on the family invited
Spinoza to join his flock, and they calmly discussed the questions of
baptism and regeneration by faith together; but genius only expresses
itself to genius, and the pastor went away mystified. Van der Spijck
did not produce great art, yet his pictures are now in demand because he
was the kind and loyal friend of Spinoza, and his heart, not his art,
fixes his place in history.
In his sketch, Zangwill has certain of his old friends, members of the
Van den Ende family, hunt out the philosopher in his obscure lodgings
and pay him a social visit. Then it was that he turned pale, and
stammeringly tried to conceal his agitation at mention of the name of
the only woman he had ever loved.
The image of that one fine flaming up of divine passion followed him to
the day of his death. It was too sacred for him to discuss--he avoided
women, kept out of society, and forever in his sad heart there burned a
shrine to the ideal. And so he lived, separate and apart. A single
little room sufficed--the work-bench where he made his lenses near the
window, and near at hand the table covered with manuscript where he
wrote. Renan says that when he died, aged forty-three, his passing was
like a sigh, he had lived so quietly--so few knew him--there were no
earthly ties to break.
The worthy Van der Spijcks, plain, honest people, had invited him to go
to church with them. He smilingly excused himself--he had thoughts he
must write out ere they escaped. When the good man and his wife returned
in an hour, their lodger was dead.
A tablet on the house marks the spot, and but a short distance away in
the open square sits his form in deathless bronze, pensively writing
out an idea which we can only guess--or is it a last love-letter to the
woman to whom he gave his heart and who pushed from her the gift?
* * * * *
Spinoza had courage, yet great gentleness of disposition. His habit of
mind was conciliatory: if strong opinions were expressed in his presence
concerning some person or thing, he usually found some good to say of
the person or an excuse for the thing. He was one of the most unselfish
men in history--money was nothing to him, save as it might minister to
his very few immediate wants or the needs of others.
He smilingly refused a pension offered him by a French courtier if he
would but dedicate a book to the King; and a legacy left him by an
admiring student, Simon de Vries, was declined for the reason that it
was too much and he did not wish the care of it. Later, he compromised
with the heirs by accepting an income of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars a year. "How unreasonable," he exclaimed, "they want me to
accept five hundred florins a year--I told them I would take three
hundred, but I will not be burdened by a stiver more." If he was
financially free from the necessity of earning his living at his trade,
he feared the quality of his thought might be diluted. You can not
think intently and intensely all of the time. Those who try it never are
able to dive deep nor soar high.... Good digestion demands a certain
amount of coarse food--refined and condensed aliment alone kills. Man
should work and busy himself with the commonplace, rest himself for his
flight, and when the moment of transfiguration comes, make the best of
it.
All he asked was to be given the privilege to work and to think. As for
expressing his thoughts, he made no public addresses and during his life
only one of his books was printed. This was the "Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus," which mentioned "Hamburg" on the title page, but
with the author's name wisely omitted. Trite enough now are the
propositions laid down--that God is everywhere and that man is brother
to the tree, the rock, the flower. Emerson states the case in his
"Over-Soul" and "Spiritual Laws" in the true, calm Spinozistic style--as
if the gentle Jew had come back to earth and dictated his thought,
refined, polished and smooth as one of his own little lenses, to the man
of Concord. Benedictus Concordia, blessing and peace be with thee!
But the lynx-eyed censors soon discovered this single, solitary book of
Spinoza's, and although they failed to locate the author, Spinoza had
the satisfaction of seeing the work placed on the Index and a general
interdict issued against it by Christendom and Judea as well. It was
really of some importance. It was so thoroughly in demand that it still
circulated with false title pages. In the Lenox Library, New York, is a
copy of the first edition, finely bound, and lettered thus: "A Treatise
on the Sailing of Ships against the Wind," which shows the straits
booksellers were put to in evading the censors, and also reveals a touch
of wit that doubtless was appreciated by the Elect.
His modesty, patience, kindness and freedom from all petty whim and
prejudice set Spinoza apart as a marked man. Withal he was eminently
religious, and the reference to him by Novalis as "the God-intoxicated
man" seems especially applicable to one who saw God in everything.
Renan said at the dedication of The Hague monument to Spinoza, "Since
the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we have not seen a life so
profoundly filled with the sentiment of the divine."
When walking along the streets of The Hague and coarse voices called
after him in guttural, "Kill the renegade!" he said calmly, "We must
remember that these men are expressing the essence of their being, just
as I express the essence of mine."
* * * * *
Spinoza taught that the love of God is the supreme good; that virtue is
its own reward, and folly its own punishment; and that every one ought
to love his neighbor and obey the civil powers.
He made no enemies except by his opinions. He was infinitely patient,
sweet in temper--had respect for all religions, and never offended by
parading his heresies in the faces of others.
Nothing but the kicks of scorn and the contumely that came to Spinoza
could possibly have freed him to the extent he was free from Judaistic
bonds.
He had disciples who called him "Master," and who taught him nothing but
patience in answering their difficulties.
One is amazed at the hunger of the mind at the time of Spinoza. Men
seemed to think, and dare to grasp for "New Thought" to a marvelous
extent.
Spinoza says that "evil" and "good" have no objective reality, but are
merely relative to our feelings, and that "evil" in particular is
nothing positive, but a privation only, or non-existence.
Spinoza says that love consecrates every indifferent particular
connected with the object of affection. Good is that which we certainly
know to be useful to us. Evil is that which we certainly know stands in
the way of our command of good.
Good is that which helps. Bad is that which hinders our
self-maintenance and active powers.
A passage from Spinoza which well reveals his habit of thought and which
placed the censors on his track runs as follows:
The ultimate design of the State is not to dominate men, to
restrain them by fear, to make them subject to the will of others,
but, on the contrary, to permit every one, as far as possible, to
live in security. That is to say, to preserve intact the natural
right which is his, to live without being harmed himself or doing
harm to others. No, I say, the design of the State is not to
transform men into animals or automata from reasonable beings; its
design is to arrange matters that citizens may develop their minds
and bodies in security, and to make free use of their reason. The
true design of the State, then, is liberty. Whoever would respect
the rights of the sovereign ought never to act in opposition to his
decrees; but each has a right to think as he pleases and to say
what he thinks, provided that he limits himself to speaking and to
teaching in the name of pure reason, and that he does not attempt,
in his private capacity, to introduce innovations into the State.
For example, a citizen demonstrates that a certain law is repugnant
to sound reason, and believing this, he thinks it ought to be
abrogated. If he submits his opinion to the judgment of the
sovereign, to which alone it belongs to establish and to abolish
laws, and if, in the meantime, he does nothing contrary to law, he
certainly deserves well of the State as being a good citizen.
Let us admit that it is possible to stifle liberty of men and to
impose on them a yoke, to the point that they dare not even
murmur, however feebly, without the consent of the sovereign:
never, it is certain, can any one hinder them from thinking
according to their own free will. What follows hence? It is that
men will think one way and speak another; that, consequently, good
faith, so essential a virtue to a State, becomes corrupted; that
adulation, so detestable, and perfidy, shall be held in honor,
bringing in their train a decadence of all good and sound
habitudes. What can be more fatal to a State than to exile, as
malcontents, honest citizens, simply because they do not hold the
opinion of the multitude, and because they are ignorant of the art
of dissembling! What can be more fatal to a State than to treat as
enemies and to put to death men who have committed no other crime
than that of thinking independently! Behold, then, the scaffold,
the dread of the bad man, which now becomes the glorious theater
where tolerance and virtue blaze forth in all their splendor, and
covers publicly with opprobrium the sovereign majesty! Assuredly,
there is but one thing which that spectacle can teach us, and that
is to imitate these noble martyrs, or, if we fear death, to become
the abject flatterers of the powerful. Nothing hence can be so
perilous as to relegate and submit to divine right things which are
purely speculative, and to impose laws upon opinions which are, or
at least ought to be, subject to discussion among men. If the right
of the State were limited to repressing acts, and speech were
allowed impunity, controversies would not turn so often into
seditions.