Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 15

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 a.s.sumption 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 unsurpa.s.sed, 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 G.o.d'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 doc.u.ment:

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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 ma.n.u.script arrived little bands of earnest students would meet, and the ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sion 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 ma.n.u.script where he wrote. Renan says that when he died, aged forty-three, his pa.s.sing 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 coa.r.s.e 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 t.i.tle page, but with the author's name wisely omitted. Trite enough now are the propositions laid down--that G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d-intoxicated man" seems especially applicable to one who saw G.o.d 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 coa.r.s.e 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 mult.i.tude, 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! a.s.suredly, there is but one thing which that spectacle can teach us, and that is to imitate these n.o.ble 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.

AUGUSTE COMTE

In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of Humanity--both its philosophical and its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the general direction of the world.

Their object is to const.i.tute at length a real Providence in all departments--moral, intellectual and material.

--_Auguste Comte_

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUGUSTE COMTE]

A little city girl asked of her country cousin, when honey was the topic up for discussion, "Does your papa keep a bee?"

Let the statement go unchallenged, that a single bee has neither the disposition nor the ability to make honey.

Bees accomplish nothing save as they work together, and neither do men.

Great men come in groups.

Six men, three living at the village of Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, and three at Cambridge, fifteen miles away, supplied America really all her literature, until Indiana suddenly loomed large on the horizon, and a.s.sumed the center of the stage, like the spirit of the Brocken.