Short Studies on Great Subjects Part 20

We proceed to more important matters--to Spinoza's detailed theory of nature as exhibited in man and in man's mind. His theory for its bold ingenuity is by far the most remarkable which on this dark subject has ever been proposed. Whether we can believe it or not, is another question; yet undoubtedly it provides a solution for every difficulty; it accepts with equal welcome the extremes of materialism and of spiritualism: and if it be the test of the soundness of a philosophy that it will explain phenomena and reconcile contradictions, it is hard to account for the fact that a system which bears such a test so admirably, should nevertheless be so incredible as it is.

Most people have heard of the 'Harmonie Pre-etablie' of Leibnitz; it is borrowed without acknowledgment from Spinoza, and adapted to the Leibnitzian philosophy. 'Man,' says Leibnitz, 'is composed of mind and body; but what is mind and what is body, and what is the nature of their union? Substances so opposite in kind cannot affect one another; mind cannot act on matter, or matter upon mind; and the appearance of their reciprocal operation is an appearance only and a delusion.' A delusion so general, however, required to be accounted for; and Leibnitz accounted for it by supposing that G.o.d, in creating a world composed of material and spiritual phenomena, ordained that these several phenomena should proceed from the beginning in parallel lines side by side in a constantly corresponding harmony. The sense of seeing results, it appears to us, from the formation of a picture upon the retina. The motion of the arm or the leg appears to result from an act of will; but in either case we mistake coincidence for causation. Between substances so wholly alien there can be no intercommunion; and we only suppose that the object seen produces the idea, and that the desire produces the movement, because the phenomena of matter and the phenomena of spirit are so contrived as to flow always in the same order and sequence. This hypothesis, as coming from Leibnitz, has been, if not accepted, at least listened to respectfully; because while taking it out of its proper place, he contrived to graft it upon Christianity; and succeeded, with a sort of speculative legerdemain, in making it appear to be in harmony with revealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination, and connected with the Christian doctrine of Retribution, it steps forward with an air of unconscious innocence, as if interfering with nothing which Christians generally believe. And yet, leaving as it does no larger scope for liberty or responsibility than when in the hands of Spinoza,[O] Leibnitz, in our opinion, has only succeeded in making it infinitely more revolting. Spinoza could not regard the bad man as an object of Divine anger and a subject of retributory punishment. He was not a Christian, and made no pretension to be considered such; and it did not occur to him to regard the actions of a being which, both with Leibnitz and himself, is (to use his own expression) an _automaton spirituale_, as deserving a fiery indignation and everlasting vengeance.

'Deus,' according to Spinoza's definition, 'est ens constans infinitis attributis quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit.'

Under each of these attributes _infinita sequuntur_, and everything which an infinite intelligence can conceive, and an infinite power can produce,--everything which follows as a possibility out of the divine nature,--all things which have been, and are, and will be,--find expression and actual existence, not under one attribute only, but under each and every attribute. Language is so ill adapted to explain such a system, that even to state it accurately is all but impossible, and a.n.a.logies can only remotely suggest what such expressions mean. But it is as if it were said that the same thought might be expressed in an infinite variety of languages; and not in words only, but in action, in painting, in sculpture, in music, in any form of any kind which can be employed as a means of spiritual embodiment. Of all these infinite attributes, two only, as we said, are known to us--extension and thought. Material phenomena are phenomena of extension; and to every modification of extension an idea corresponds under the attribute of thought. Out of such a compound as this is formed man, composed of body and mind; two parallel and correspondent modifications eternally answering one another. And not man only, but all other beings and things are similarly formed and similarly animated; the anima or mind of each varying according to the complicity of the organism of its material counterpart. Although body does not think, nor affect the mind's power of thinking, and mind does not control body, nor communicate to it either motion or rest or any influence from itself, yet body with all its properties is the object or ideate of mind: whatsoever body does, mind perceives; and the greater the energising power of the first, the greater the perceiving power of the second. And this is not because they are adapted one to the other by some inconceivable preordinating power, but because mind and body are _una et eadem res_, the one absolute being affected in one and the same manner, but expressed under several attributes; the modes and affections of each attribute having that being for their cause, as he exists under that attribute of which they are modes, and no other; idea being caused by idea, and body affected by body; the image on the retina being produced by the object reflected upon it, the idea or image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c.

&c.

A solution so remote from all ordinary ways of thinking on these matters is so difficult to grasp, that one can hardly speak of it as being probable, or as being improbable. Probability extends only to what we can imagine as possible, and Spinoza's theory seems to lie beyond the range within which our judgment can exercise itself. In our own opinion, indeed, as we have already said, the entire subject is one with which we have no business; and the explanation of our nature, if it is ever to be explained to us, is reserved till we are in some other state of existence. We do not disbelieve Spinoza because what he suggests is in itself incredible. The chances may be millions to one against his being right; yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probably at least as strange as his conception of it. But we are firmly convinced that of these questions, and of all like them, practical answers only lie within the reach of human faculties; and that in 'researches into the absolute' we are on the road which ends nowhere.

Among the difficulties, however, most properly akin to this philosophy itself, there is one most obvious, viz., that if the attributes of G.o.d be infinite, and each particular thing is expressed under them all, then mind and body express but an infinitesimal portion of the nature of each of ourselves; and this human nature exists (_i.e._, there exists corresponding modes of substance) in the whole infinity of the divine nature under attributes differing each from each, and all from mind and all from body. That this must be so follows from the definition of the Infinite Being, and the nature of the distinction between the two attributes which are known to us; and if this be so, why does not the mind perceive something of all these other attributes? The objection is well expressed by a correspondent (Letter 67):--'It follows from what you say,' a friend writes to Spinoza, 'that the modification which const.i.tutes my mind, and that which const.i.tutes my body, although it be one and the same modification, yet must be expressed in an infinity of ways: one way by thought, a second way by extension, a third by some attribute unknown to me, and so on to infinity; the attributes being infinite in number, and the order and connexion of modes being the same in them all. Why, then, does the mind perceive the modes of but one attribute only?'

Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily, a fragment of his letter only is extant, so that it is too brief to be satisfactory:--

In reply to your difficulty (he says), although each particular thing be truly in the Infinite mind, conceived in Infinite modes, the Infinite idea answering to all these cannot const.i.tute one and the same mind of any single being, but must const.i.tute Infinite minds. No one of all these Infinite ideas has any connexion with another.

He means, we suppose, that G.o.d's mind only perceives, or can perceive, things under their Infinite expression, and that the idea of each several mode, under whatever attribute, const.i.tutes a separate mind.

We do not know that we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will, however, attempt an ill.u.s.tration, although we fear it will be to ill.u.s.trate _obscurum per obscurius_. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now, A, as the attribute of mind, is that which perceives all which takes place under B C and D, but it is only as it exists in G.o.d that it forms the universal consciousness of all attributes at once. In its modifications it is combined separately with the modifications of each, const.i.tuting in combination with the modes of each attribute a separate being. As forming the mind of B, A perceives what takes place in B, but not what takes place in C or D. Combined with B, it forms the soul of the human body, and generally the soul of all modifications of extended substance; combined with C, it forms the soul of some other a.n.a.logous being; combined with D, again of another; but the combinations are only in pairs, in which A is constant. A and B make one being, A and C another, A and D a third; but B will not combine with C, nor C with D; each attribute being, as it were, conscious only of itself. And therefore, although to those modifications of mind and extension which we call ourselves, there are corresponding modifications under C and D, and generally under each of the Infinite attributes of G.o.d, each of ourselves being in a sense Infinite--nevertheless, we neither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselves in this Infinite aspect; our actual consciousness being limited to the phenomena of sensible experience.

English readers, however, are likely to care little for all this; they will look to the general theory, and judge of it as its aspect affects them. And first, perhaps, they will be tempted to throw aside as absurd the notion that their bodies go through the many operations which they experience them to do, undirected by their minds. It is a thing, they may say, at once preposterous and incredible. It is, however, less absurd than it seems; and, though we could not persuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the sense of having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not. It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the human body capable by its own virtue, and by the laws of material organisation, of building a house, than of _thinking_; and yet men are allowed to say that the body thinks, without being regarded as candidates for a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into stem and leaf and throw out flowers; we observe it fulfilling processes of chemistry more subtle than were ever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and producing structures more cunning than man can imitate. The bird builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate web, and stretches it in the path of his prey; directed not by calculating thought, as we conceive ourselves to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance of the nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and call it instinct, but which we believe at least to be some property residing in the organisation. We are not to suppose that the human body, the most complex of all material structures, has slighter powers in it than the bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect. Let us listen to Spinoza himself:--

There can be no doubt (he says) that this hypothesis is true; but unless I can prove it from experience, men will not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly, so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that their bodies are set in motion. And yet what body can or cannot do no one has yet determined; body, _i.e._, by the law of its own nature, and without a.s.sistance from mind. No one has so probed the human frame as to have detected all its functions and exhausted the list of them; there are powers exhibited by animals far exceeding human sagacity; and, again, feats are performed by somnambulists on which in the waking state the same persons would never venture--itself a proof that body is able to accomplish what mind can only admire. Men _say_ that mind moves body, but how it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it can impart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what they say, and are only confessing their own ignorance in specious language. They will answer me, that whether or not they understand how it can be, yet that they are a.s.sured by plain experience that unless mind could perceive, body would be altogether inactive; they know that it depends on the mind whether the tongue speaks or is silent. But do they not equally experience that if their bodies are paralysed their minds cannot think?--that if their bodies are asleep their minds are without power?--that their minds are not at all times equally able to exert themselves even on the same subject, but depend on the state of their bodies? And as for experience proving that the members of the body can be controlled by the mind, I fear experience proves very much the reverse. But it is absurd (they rejoin) to attempt to explain from the mere laws of body such things as pictures, or palaces, or works of art; the body could not build a church unless mind directed it. I have shown, however, that we do not yet know what body can or cannot do, or what would naturally follow from the structure of it; that we experience in the feats of somnambulists something which antecedently to that experience would have seemed incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of things, as I have already proved, ought to follow from it.

We are not concerned to answer this reasoning, although if the matter were one the debating of which could be of any profit, it would undoubtedly have its weight, and would require to be patiently considered. Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunity over speculations in which certainty is impossible, and in which we are trifling with what is inscrutable.

Objections of a far graver kind were antic.i.p.ated by Spinoza himself, when he went on to gather out of his philosophy 'that the mind of man being part of the Infinite intelligence, when we say that such a mind perceives this thing or that, we are, in fact, saying that G.o.d perceives it, not as he is Infinite, but as he is represented by the nature of this or that idea; and similarly, when we say that a man does this or that action, we say that G.o.d does it, not _qua_ he is Infinite, but _qua_ he is expressed in that man's nature.' 'Here,' he says, 'many readers will no doubt hesitate, and many difficulties will occur to them in the way of such a supposition.'

We confess that we ourselves are among these hesitating readers. As long as the Being whom Spinoza so freely names remains surrounded with the a.s.sociations which in this country we bring with us out of our childhood, not all the logic in the world would make us listen to language such as this. It is not so--we know it, and that is enough. We are well aware of the phalanx of difficulties which lie about our theistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religion depended on speculative consistency, and not in obedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What are we? what _is_ anything? If it be not divine--what is it then? If created--out of what is it created? and how created--and why? These questions, and others far more momentous which we do not enter upon here, may be asked and cannot be answered; but we cannot any the more consent to Spinoza on the ground that he alone consistently provides an answer; because, as we have said again and again, we do not care to have them answered at all. Conscience is the single tribunal to which we choose to be referred, and conscience declares imperatively that what he says is not true. It is painful to speak of all this, and as far as possible we designedly avoid it. Pantheism is not Atheism, but the Infinite Positive and the Infinite Negative are not so remote from one another in their practical bearings; only let us remember that we are far indeed from the truth if we think that G.o.d to Spinoza was _nothing else_ but that world which we experience. It is but one of infinite expressions of him--a conception which makes us giddy in the effort to realise it.

We have arrived at last at the outwork of the whole matter in its bearings upon life and human duty. It was in the search after this last, that Spinoza, as we said, travelled over so strange a country, and we now expect his conclusions. To discover the true good of man, to direct his actions to such ends as will secure to him real and lasting felicity, and, by a comparison of his powers with the objects offered to them, to ascertain how far they are capable of arriving at these objects, and by what means they can best be trained towards them--is the aim which Spinoza a.s.signs to philosophy. 'Most people,' he adds, 'deride or vilify their nature; it is a better thing to endeavour to understand it; and however extravagant my proceeding may be thought, I propose to a.n.a.lyse the properties of that nature as if it were a mathematical figure.' Mind being, as he conceives himself to have shown, nothing else than the idea corresponding to this or that affection of body, we are not, therefore, to think of it as a faculty, but simply and merely as an act. There is no general power called intellect, any more than there is any general abstract volition, but only _hic et ille intellectus et haec et illa volitio_.

Again, by the word Mind is understood not merely an act or acts of will or intellect, but all forms also of consciousness of sensation or emotion. The human body being composed of many small bodies, the mind is similarly composed of many minds, and the unity of body and of mind depends on the relation which the component portions maintain towards each other. This is obviously the case with body; and if we can translate metaphysics into common experience, it is equally the case with mind. There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect; a thousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form our mental composition; and since one contradicts another, and each has a tendency to become dominant, it is only in the harmonious equipoise of their several activities, in their due and just subordination, that any unity of action or consistency of feeling is possible. After a masterly a.n.a.lysis of all these tendencies (the most complete by far which has ever been made by any moral philosopher), Spinoza arrives at the principles under which unity and consistency can be obtained as the condition upon which a being so composed can look for any sort of happiness; and these principles, arrived at as they are by a route so different, are the same, and are proposed by Spinoza as being the same, as those of the Christian religion.

It might seem impossible in a system which binds together in so inexorable a sequence the relations of cause and effect, to make a place for the action of self-control; but consideration will show that, however vast the difference between those who deny and those who affirm the liberty of the will (in the sense in which the expression is usually understood), it is not a difference which affects the conduct or alters the practical bearings of it. Conduct may be determined by laws--laws as absolute as those of matter; and yet the one as well as the other may be brought under control by a proper understanding of those laws. Now, experience seems plainly to say, that while all our actions arise out of desire--that whatever we do, we do for the sake of something which we wish to be or to obtain--we are differently affected towards what is proposed to us as an object of desire, in proportion as we understand the nature of such object in itself and in its consequences. The better we know, the better we act; and the fallacy of all common arguments against necessitarianism lies in the a.s.sumption that it leaves no room for self-direction: it merely insists, in exact conformity with experience, on the conditions under which self-determination is possible. Conduct, according to the necessitarian, depends on knowledge.

Let a man certainly know that there is poison in the cup of wine before him, and he will not drink it. By the law of cause and effect, his desire for the wine is overcome by the fear of the pain or the death which will follow. So with everything which comes before him. Let the consequences of any action be clear, definite, and inevitable, and though Spinoza would not say that the knowledge of them will be absolutely sufficient to determine the conduct (because the clearest knowledge may be overborne by violent pa.s.sion), yet it is the best which we have to trust to, and will do much if it cannot do all.

On this hypothesis, after a diagnosis of the various tendencies of human nature, called commonly the pa.s.sions and affections, he returns upon the nature of our ordinary knowledge to derive out of it the means for their subordination. All these tendencies of themselves seek their own objects--seek them blindly and immoderately; and the mistakes and the unhappinesses of life arise from the want of due understanding of these objects, and a just moderation of the desire for them. His a.n.a.lysis is remarkably clear, but it is too long for us to enter upon it; the important thing being the character of the control which is to be exerted. To arrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practical utility, and which is peculiarly his own.

Following his tripart.i.te division of knowledge, he finds all kinds of it arrange themselves under one of two cla.s.ses, and to be either adequate or inadequate. By adequate knowledge he does not mean what is exhaustive and complete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct and unconfused: by inadequate, he means what we know merely as fact either derived from our own sensations, or from the authority of others, while of the connexion of it with other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning of it we know nothing. We may have an adequate idea of a circle, though we are unacquainted with all the properties which belong to it; we conceive it distinctly as a figure generated by the rotation of a line, one end of which is stationary. Phenomena, on the other hand, however made known to us--phenomena of the senses, and phenomena of experience, as long as they remain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higher relation--we can never know except as inadequately. We cannot tell what outward things are by coming in contact with certain features of them. We have a very imperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, and the sensations which we experience of various kinds rather indicate to us the nature of these bodies themselves than of the objects which affect them. Now, it is obvious that the greater part of mankind act only upon knowledge of this latter kind. The amus.e.m.e.nts, even the active pursuits, of most of us remain wholly within the range of uncertainty, and, therefore, are full of hazard and precariousness: little or nothing issues as we expect. We look for pleasure and we find pain; we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises the ineffectual character which we so complain of in life--the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the const.i.tution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life 'there comes one event to all, to the wise and to the unwise,' 'yet wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness.' The phenomena of experience, after inductive experiment, and just and careful consideration, arrange themselves under laws uniform in their operation, and furnishing a guide to the judgment; and over all things, although the interval must remain unexplored for ever, because what we would search into is Infinite, may be seen the beginning of all things, the absolute eternal G.o.d. 'Mens humana,' Spinoza continues, 'quaedam agit, quaedam vero pat.i.tur.' In so far as it is influenced by inadequate ideas--'eatenus pat.i.tur'--it is pa.s.sive and in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice: in so far as its ideas are adequate--'eatenus agit'--it is active, it is itself. While we are governed by outward temptations, by the casual pleasures, by the fortunes or the misfortunes of life, we are but instruments, yielding ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on by its appet.i.tes, or the inanimate matter by the laws which bind it; we are slaves--instruments, it may be, of some higher purpose in the order of nature, but in ourselves nothing; instruments which are employed for a special work, and which are consumed in effecting it. So far, on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as we understand what we are, and direct our conduct not by the pa.s.sing emotion of the moment, but by a grave, clear, and constant knowledge of what is really good, so far we are said to act--we are ourselves the spring of our own activity--we pursue the genuine well-being of our entire nature, and _that_ we can always find, and it never disappoints us when found.

All things desire life; all things seek for energy, and fuller and ampler being. The component parts of man, his various appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions, are seeking larger activity while pursuing each its immoderate indulgence; and it is the primary law of every single being that it so follows what will give it increased vitality. Whatever will contribute to such increase is the proper good of each; and the good of man as a united being is measured and determined by the effect of it upon his collective powers. The appet.i.tes gather power from their several objects of desire; but the power of the part is the weakness of the whole; and man as a collective person gathers life, being, and self-mastery only from the absolute good,--the source of all real good, and truth, and energy,--that is, G.o.d. The love of G.o.d is the extinction of all other loves and all other desires. To know G.o.d, as far as man can know him, is power, self-government, and peace. And this is virtue, and this is blessedness.

Thus, by a formal process of demonstration, we are brought round to the old conclusions of theology; and Spinoza protests that it is no new doctrine which he is teaching, but that it is one which in various dialects has been believed from the beginning of the world. Happiness depends on the consistency and coherency of character, and that coherency can only be given by the knowledge of the One Being, to know whom is to know all things adequately, and to love whom is to have conquered every other inclination. The more entirely our minds rest on him--the more distinctly we regard all things in their relation to him, the more we cease to be under the dominion of external things; we surrender ourselves consciously to do his will, and as living men and not as pa.s.sive things we become the instruments of his power. When the true nature and true causes of our affections become clear to us, they have no more power to influence us. The more we understand, the less can feeling sway us; we know that all things are what they are, because they are so const.i.tuted that they could not be otherwise, and we cease to be angry with our brother, because he disappoints us; we shall not fret at calamity, nor complain of fortune, because no such thing as fortune exists; and if we fail it is better than if we had succeeded, not perhaps for ourselves, yet for the universe. We cannot fear, when nothing can befall us except what G.o.d wills, and we shall not violently hope, when the future, whatever it be, will be the best which is possible. Seeing all things in their place in the everlasting order, Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation of present pleasure will not overcome the certainty of future pain, for the pain will be as sure as the pleasure, and we shall see all things under a rule of adamant. The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the idea of contingency, and expect to escape the just issues of their actions; the wise man will know that each action brings with it its inevitable consequences, which even G.o.d cannot change without ceasing to be himself.

In such a manner, through all the conditions of life, Spinoza pursues the advantages which will accrue to man from the knowledge of G.o.d, G.o.d and man being what his philosophy has described them. His practical teaching is singularly beautiful; although much of its beauty is perhaps due to a.s.sociations which have arisen out of Christianity, and which in the system of Pantheism have no proper abiding place. Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity, he even seems to have relieved himself of the more fearful features of the general creed. He acknowledges no h.e.l.l, no devil, no positive and active agency at enmity with G.o.d; but sees in all things infinite gradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and all fulfilling the part allotted to them.

Doubtless a pleasant exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only we could persuade ourselves that a hundred pages of judiciously arranged demonstrations could really and indeed have worked it for us; if we could indeed believe that we could have the year without its winter, day without night, sunlight without shadow. Evil is unhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of.

But if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the disinterestedness and calm n.o.bility which pervades his theories of human life and obligation. He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded.

Virtue is the power of G.o.d in the human soul, and that is the exhaustive end of all human desire. 'Beat.i.tudo non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. Nihil aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitiva cognitione oritur.' The same spirit of generosity exhibits itself in all his conclusions. The ordinary objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for one man to obtain them is for another to lose them; and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not what any man should labour after. But the fulness of G.o.d suffices for us all; and he who possesses this good desires only to communicate it to every one, and to make all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--'The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour's faults, and sparingly of the infirmity of human nature; but he will speak largely of human virtue and human power, and of the means by which that nature can best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that fear and aversion with which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to love and desire it.' And once more:--'He who loves G.o.d will not desire that G.o.d should love him in return with any partial or particular affection, for that is to desire that G.o.d for his sake should change his everlasting nature and become lower than himself.'

One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith would seem in such a system to be necessarily wanting. Where individual action is resolved into the modified activity of the Universal Being, all absorbing and all evolving, the individuality of the personal man is but an evanescent and unreal shadow. Such individuality as we now possess, whatever it be, might continue to exist in a future state as really as it exists in the present, and those to whom it belongs might be anxious naturally for its persistence. Yet it would seem that if the soul be nothing except the idea of a body actually existing, when that body is decomposed into its elements, the soul corresponding to it must accompany it into an answering dissolution. And this, indeed, Spinoza in one sense actually affirms, when he denies to the mind any power of retaining consciousness of what has befallen it in life, 'nisi durante corpore.' But Spinozism is a philosophy full of surprises; and our calculations of what _must_ belong to it are perpetually baffled. The imagination, the memory, the senses, whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perish necessarily and eternally; and the man who has been the slave of his inclinations, who has no knowledge of G.o.d, and no active possession of himself, having in life possessed no personality, loses in death the appearance of it with the dissolution of the body.

Nevertheless, there is in G.o.d an idea expressing the essence of the mind, united to the mind as the mind is united to the body, and thus there is in the soul something of an everlasting nature which cannot utterly perish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many of his most solemn conclusions, deserts for a moment the thread of his demonstrations, and appeals to the consciousness. In spite of our non-recollection of what pa.s.sed before our birth, in spite of all difficulties from the dissolution of the body, 'Nihilominus,' he says, 'sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse. Nam mens non minus res illas sent.i.t quas intelligendo concipit, quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis enim oculi quibus res videt observatque sunt ipsae demonstrationes.'

This perception, immediately revealed to the mind, falls into easy harmony with the rest of the system. As the mind is not a faculty, but an act or acts,--not a power of perception, but the perception itself, in its high union with the highest object (to use the metaphysical language which Coleridge has made popular and partially intelligible), the object and the subject become one. If knowledge be followed as it ought to be followed, and all objects of knowledge be regarded in their relations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledge of particular outward things, of nature, or life, or history, becomes, in fact, knowledge of G.o.d; and the more complete or adequate such knowledge, the more the mind is raised above what is perishable in the phenomena to the idea or law which lies beyond them. It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal, not upon the temporary; and being thus occupied with the everlasting laws, and its activity subsisting in its perfect union with them, it contracts in itself the character of the objects which possess it. Thus we are emanc.i.p.ated from the conditions of duration; we are liable even to death only _quatenus patimur_, as we are pa.s.sive things and not active intelligences; and the more we possess such knowledge and are possessed by it, the more entirely the pa.s.sive is superseded by the active--so that at last the human soul may 'become of such a nature that the portion of it which will perish with the body in comparison with that of it which shall endure, shall be insignificant and _nullius momenti_.' (Eth. v. 38.)

Such are the princ.i.p.al features of a philosophy, the influence of which upon Europe, direct and indirect, it is not easy to over-estimate. The account of it is far from being an account of the whole of Spinoza's labours; his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' was the forerunner of German historical criticism; the whole of which has been but the application of principles laid down in that remarkable work. But this is not a subject on which, upon the present occasion, we have cared to enter. We have designedly confined ourselves to the system which is most a.s.sociated with the name of its author. It is this which has been really powerful, which has stolen over the minds even of thinkers who imagine themselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in the absolute Pantheism of Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel, in the Pantheistic Christianity of Herder and Schleiermacher. Pa.s.sing into practical life it has formed the strong, shrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has been able to unite with the theories of the most extreme materialism.

It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has been unmixedly good), at the bottom of that more reverent contemplation of nature which has caused the success of our modern landscape painting, which inspired Wordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is to become an instrument of intellectual education, must first be infused into the lessons of nature; the sense of that 'something' interfused in the material world--

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;-- A motion and a spirit, which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

If we shrink from regarding the extended universe, with Spinoza, as an actual manifestation of Almighty G.o.d, we are unable to rest in the mere denial that it is this. We go on to ask what it _is_, and we are obliged to conclude thus much at least of it, that every smallest being was once a thought in his mind; and in the study of what he has made, we are really and truly studying a revelation of himself.

It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather on the moral side, that the stumbling-block is lying; in that excuse for evil and for evil men which the necessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it in what fair-sounding words we will. So plain this is, that common-sense people, and especially English people, cannot bring themselves even to consider the question without impatience, and turn disdainfully and angrily from a theory which confuses their instincts of right and wrong.

Although, however, error on this side is infinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world with impunity; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters we have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have given the fatalist a vantage ground of real truth which we ought to have considered and allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enter briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of life are our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what they say to us; and dislike the lesson as we may, it is cowardice which refuses to hear it.

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lie before every man, and that he is free to choose between them, and the responsibility of choice rests with himself. The fatalist's belief is that every man's actions are determined by causes external and internal over which he has no power, leaving no room for any moral choice whatever. The first is contradicted by facts, the second by the instinct of conscience. Even Spinoza allows that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard the future as contingent, and ourselves as able to influence it; and it is incredible that both our inward convictions and our outward conduct should be built together upon a falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be the speculative account of the matter, we are practically forced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the truth, for it may be equally said that practically we are forced to regard each other as _not_ free; and to make allowance, every moment, for influences for which we cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not,--if every person of sound mind (in the common acceptation of the term) be equally able at all times to act right if only he _will_,--why all the care which we take of children? why the pains to keep them from bad society? why do we so anxiously watch their disposition, to determine the education which will best answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we vary our moral censure according to the opportunities of the offender?

Why do we find excuses for youth, for inexperience, for violent natural pa.s.sion, for bad education, bad example? Why, except that we feel that all these things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them? But what we act upon in private life we cannot acknowledge in our ethical theories, and while our conduct in detail is humane and just, we have been contented to gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and coa.r.s.e generalisations of political necessity. In the swift haste of social life we must indeed treat men as we find them. We have no time to make allowances; and the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is a mere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye though he has been trained from his cradle in the kennels of St. Giles's; and definite penalties must be attached to definite acts, the conditions of political life not admitting of any other method of dealing with them. But it is absurd to argue from such rude necessity that each act therefore, by whomsoever committed, is of specific culpability. The act is one thing, the moral guilt is another. There are many cases in which, as Butler again allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom, the guilt attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether.

This is plain matter of fact, and as long as we continue to deny or ignore it, there will be found men (not bad men, but men who love the truth as much as ourselves) who will see only what we neglect, and will insist upon it, and build their systems upon it.

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those natural tendencies which each of us brings with him into the world,--which we did not make, and yet which almost as much determine what we are to be, as the properties of the seed determine the tree which shall grow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or obstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is as large difference in their dispositions as in the features of their faces. Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult or impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Two children are taught to draw; one learns with ease, the other hardly or never. In vain the master will show him what to do. It seems so easy: it seems as if he had only to _will_, and the thing would be done; but it is not so. Between the desire and the execution lies the incapable organ which only wearily, and after long labour, imperfectly accomplishes what is required of it. And the same, _to a certain extent_, unless we will deny the patent facts of experience, holds true in moral actions. No wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust aside as these things are in the popular beliefs, as soon as they are recognised in their full reality they should be mistaken for the whole truth, and the free-will theory be thrown aside as a chimera.

It may be said, and it often is said, that such reasonings are merely sophistical--that however we entangle ourselves in logic, we are conscious that we are free; we know--we are as sure as we are of our existence--that we have power to act this way or that way, exactly as we choose. But this is less plain than it seems; and if granted, it proves less than it appears to prove. It may be true that we can act as we choose, but can we _choose_? Is not our choice determined for us? We cannot determine from the fact, because we always _have chosen_ as soon as we act, and we cannot replace the conditions in such a way as to discover whether we could have chosen anything else. The stronger motive may have determined our volition without our perceiving it; and if we desire to prove our independence of motive, by showing that we _can_ choose something different from that which we should naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a _motive_. Again, consciousness of the possession of any power may easily be delusive; we can properly judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished; we know what we _have_ done, and we may infer from having done it that our power was equal to what it achieved. But it is easy for us to over-rate our strength if we try to measure our abilities in themselves.

A man who can leap five yards may think that he can leap six; yet he may try and fail. A man who can write prose may only learn that he cannot write poetry from the badness of the verses which he produces. To the appeal to consciousness of power there is always an answer:--that we may believe ourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that we may be deceived.

There is, however, another group of feelings which cannot be set aside in this way, which do prove that, in some sense or other, in some degree or other, we are the authors of our own actions. It is one of the clearest of all inward phenomena, that, where two or more courses involving moral issues are before us, whether we have a consciousness of _power_ to choose between them or not, we have a consciousness that we _ought_ to choose between them; a sense of duty--[Greek: hoti dei touto prattein]--as Aristotle expresses it, which we cannot shake off.

Whatever this consciousness involves (and some measure of freedom it must involve or it is nonsense), the feeling exists within us, and refuses to yield before all the batteries of logic. It is not that of the two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and the other more immediately tempting. We have a sense of obligation irrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again by a sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain will Spinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as they are with the theory of powerlessness, are mistakes arising out of a false philosophy.

They are primary facts of sensation most vivid in minds of most vigorous sensibility; and although they may be extinguished by habitual profligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed by logic, the paralysis of the conscience is no more a proof that it is not a real power of perceiving real things, than blindness is a proof that sight is not a real power. The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are not conclusions of reasoning, but immediate sensations like those of seeing and hearing; and although, like the other senses, they may be mistaken sometimes in the accounts they render to us, the fact of the existence of such feelings at all proves that there is something which corresponds to them. If there be any such things as 'true ideas,' or clear, distinct perceptions at all, this of praise and blame is one of them, and according to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it involves. And it involves that some where or other the influence of causes ceases to operate, and that some degree of power there is in men of self-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specific actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculative difficulties remain in abundance. It will be said in a case, _e.g._ of moral trial, that there may have been _power_; but was there _power enough_ to resist the temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. If there was not, there was no responsibility. We must answer again from practical instinct. We refuse to allow men to be considered all equally guilty who have committed the same faults; and we insist that their actions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similar conviction a.s.sures us that there is somewhere a point of freedom. Where that point is--where other influences terminate, and responsibility begins--will always be of intricate and often impossible solution. But if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarianism, and man is what he has been hitherto supposed to be--an exception in the order of nature, with a power not differing in degree but differing in kind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all life, is a mystery; and as to anatomise the body will not reveal the secret of animation, so with the actions of the moral man. The spiritual life, which alone gives them meaning and being, glides away before the logical dissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work upon.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] _Westminster Review_, 1854.

[O] Since these words were written a book has appeared in Paris by an able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead us to modify the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give our reasons for speaking as we do. M. de Careil[P] has discovered in the library at Hanover, a MS. in the hand-writing of Leibnitz, containing a series of remarks on the book of a certain John Wachter. It does not appear who this John Wachter was, nor by what accident he came to have so distinguished a critic. If we may judge by the extracts at present before us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, who had attempted to combine the theology of the Cabbala with the very little which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza; and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections upon them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance of Spinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an opportunity of noticing the points on which he most disapproved of Spinoza himself; and these few notices M. de Careil has now for the first time published as _The Refutation of Spinoza_, by Leibnitz. They are exceedingly brief and scanty; and the writer of them would a.s.suredly have hesitated to describe an imperfect criticism by so ambitious a t.i.tle. The modern editor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and we will not quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his master had accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what is at least a curious discovery, and we will not qualify the grat.i.tude which he has earned by industry and good will. At the same time, the notes themselves confirm the opinion which we have always entertained, that Leibnitz did not understand Spinoza. Leibnitz did not understand him, and the followers of Leibnitz do not understand him now. If he were no more than what he is described in the book before us--if his metaphysics were 'miserable,' if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothing more than a second-rate disciple of Descartes--we can a.s.sure M. de Careil that we should long ago have heard the last of him.

There must be something else, something very different from this, to explain the position which he holds in Germany, or the fascination which his writings exerted over such minds as those of Lessing or of Gothe; the fact of so enduring an influence is more than a sufficient answer to mere depreciating criticism. This, however, is not a point which there is any use in pressing. Our present business is to justify the two a.s.sertions which we have made. First, that Leibnitz borrowed his _Theory of the Harmonie Pre-etablie_ from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and, secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion as is that of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its real character.

First for the _Harmonie Pre-etablie_. Spinoza's _Ethics_ appeared in 1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz. In 1696, Leibnitz announced as a discovery of his own, a Theory of _The Communication of Substances_, which he ill.u.s.trates in the following manner:--

'Vous ne comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouver ce que j'ai avance touchant la communication, ou l'harmonie de deux substances aussi differentes que l'ame et le corps? Il est vrai que je crois en avoir trouve le moyen; et voici comment je pretends vous satisfaire.

Figurez-vous deux horloges ou montres qui s'accordent parfaitement. Or cela se peut faire de trois manieres. La 1^{e} consiste dans une influence mutuelle. La 2^{e} est d'y attacher un ouvrier habile qui les redresse, et les mette d'accord a tous moments. La 3^{e} est de fabriquer ces deux pendules avec tant d'art et de justesse, qu'on se puisse a.s.surer de leur accord dans la suite. Mettez maintenant l'ame et le corps a la place de ces deux pendules; leur accord peut arriver par l'une de ces trois manieres. La voye d'influence est celle de la philosophie vulgaire; mais comme l'on ne sauroit concevoir des particules materielles qui puissent pa.s.ser d'une de ces substances dans l'autre, il faut abandonner ce sentiment. La voye de l'a.s.sistance continuelle du Createur est celle du systeme des causes occasionnelles; mais je tiens que c'est faire intervenir Deus ex machina, dans une chose naturelle et ordinaire, ou selon la raison il ne doit concourir, que do la maniere qu'il concourt a toutes les autres choses naturelles. Ainsi il ne reste que mon hypothese; c'est-a-dire que la voye de l'harmonie.

Dieu a fait des le commencement chacune de ces deux substances de telle nature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propres loix qu'elle a recues avec son etre, elle s'accorde pourtant avec l'autre tout comme s'il y avoit une influence mutuelle, ou comme si Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au-dela de son concours general. Apres cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver a moins qu'on ne veuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est a.s.sez habile pour se servir de cette artifice,' &c.--LEIBNITZ, _Opera_, p. 133.

Berlin edition, 1840.

Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system with Christianity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation of mind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatment, from what it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza and Leibnitz both agree in this one peculiar conception in which they differ from all other philosophers before or after them--that mind and body have no direct communication with each other, and that the phenomena of them merely correspond. M. de Careil says they both borrowed it from Descartes; but that is impossible. Descartes held no such opinion; it was the precise point of disagreement at which Spinoza parted from him; and therefore, since in point of date Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and we know that Leibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must either suppose that he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation which he ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely improbable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards re-originated for himself one of the most singular and peculiar notions which was ever offered to the belief of mankind.

So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of little moment.