Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 13

There was no disturbance in the man's general health, although he continued to have visions, trances and curious dreams. He began to write--steadily, day by day the writings went on--but from this time experience was disregarded, and for him the material world slept; he dealt only with spiritual things, using the physical merely for a.n.a.logy, and his geology and botany were those of the Old Testament.

Returning to Stockholm he resigned his government office, broke his engagements with the University, repudiated all scientific studies, and devoted himself to his new mission--that is, writing out what the spirits dictated, and what he saw on his celestial journeys.

That there are pa.s.sages of great beauty and insight in his work, is very sure, and by discarding what one does not understand, and accepting what seems reasonable and right, a practical theology that serves and benefits can be built up. The value of Swedenborg lies largely in what you can read into him.

The Swedish Protestant Church in London chose him as their bishop without advising with him. Gradually other scattering churches did the same, and after his death a well-defined cult, calling themselves Swedenborgians, arose and his works were ranked as holy writ and read in the churches, side by side with the Bible.

Swedenborg died in London, March Twenty-ninth, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, aged eighty-four years. Up to the very day of his pa.s.sing away he enjoyed good health, and was possessed of a gentle, kind and obliging disposition that endeared him to all he met. There is an idea in the minds of simple people that insanity is always accompanied by violence, ravings and uncouth and dangerous conduct. Dreams are a temporary insanity--reason sleeps and the mind roams the universe, uncurbed and wildly free. On awakening, for an instant we may not know where we are, and all things are in disorder; but gradually time, location, size and correspondences find their proper place and we are awake.

Should, however, the dreams of the night continue during the day, when we are awake and moving about, we would say the man was insane.

Swedenborg could become oblivious to every external thing, and dream at will. And to a degree his mind always dictated the dreams, at least the subject was of his own volition. If it was necessary to travel or transact business, the dreams were postponed and he lived right here on earth, a man of good judgment, safe reason and proper conduct.

Unsoundness of mind is not necessarily folly. Across the murky clouds of madness shoots and gleams, at times, the deepest insight into the heart of things. And the fact that Swedenborg was unbalanced does not warrant us in rejecting all he said and taught as false and faulty. He was always well able to take care of himself and to manage his affairs successfully, even to printing the books that contain the record of his ravings. Follow closely the lives of great inventors, discoverers, poets and artists, and it will be found that the world is debtor to so-called madmen for many of its richest gifts. Few, indeed, are they who can burst the bonds of custom and condition, sail out across the unknown seas, and bring us records of the Enchanted Isles. And who shall say where originality ends and insanity begins? Swedenborg himself attributed his remarkable faculties to the development of a sixth sense, and intimates that in time all men will be so equipped. Death is as natural as life, and possibly insanity is a plan of Nature for sending a searchlight flash into the darkness of futurity. Insane or not, thinking men everywhere agree that Swedenborg blessed and benefited the race--preparing the way for the thinkers and the doers who should come after him.

SPINOZA

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 G.o.d and men. Hence, laws about opinions are aimed not at the base but at the n.o.ble, 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_

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sent, we give the t.i.tle 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.ses 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 soph.o.m.ore 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 t.i.tles, 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 t.i.tles and degrees would cost us half our subscription-list." And so I a.s.sume 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 l.u.s.t 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, a.s.sociating 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; Th.o.r.eau, 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--Th.o.r.eau, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 succ.u.mbed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 f.a.gots 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.