The Philosophy of Spinoza Part 3

Spinoza never believed a sound metaphysics was, for the ma.s.ses, the indispensable basis of a good moral life. The mult.i.tude, he was firmly convinced, are controlled by their pa.s.sions and desires, not by knowledge and reason. The coercive law of the State and Nature, not philosophy, keep them living within the bounds necessary for social order and human well-being. Far from it being necessary to tell the ma.s.ses only the truth Spinoza believed, as did Plato before him, that it may even be necessary in order to rule the ma.s.ses successfully in the ways of wisdom and virtue to deceive them to a greater or lesser extent.

Such deception is, as a political expediency, morally justified, for the rulers would be lying in the interests of virtue and truth.

Spinoza did not suffer from the fond contemporary delusion that the salvation of mankind will come about when philosophers become like all other people. He knew, as Plato did, that the day of ultimate, universal happiness will dawn rather when all other people become like philosophers. In the meantime, it is the height of moral and political folly to act as if that day had arrived or else could be ushered in by morning. Spinoza had nothing but contempt for facile-tongued, feather-brained Utopians. He loved humanity too sincerely to mislead humanity or himself that way. And so we find in Spinoza's _Ethics_ as in his _Tractatus_ two systems of morals--one for the many who are called, and one for the few who are chosen. In the _Tractatus_, the religion of the many is summarily called "obedience"; in the _Ethics_ it is more fully shown to consist of utilitarianism in the conduct of our affairs, high-mindedness towards our fellows, and piety towards Nature or G.o.d. To this is added, as the rare religion of the few, what is designated in both treatises alike as the intellectual love of Nature or G.o.d.

X

Spinoza's religion is as naturalistic as his ethics. By making G.o.d and Nature equivalent terms Spinoza was not merely resorting to equivocation to escape the penalty of his views. The identification of G.o.d and Nature fully embodies Spinoza's doctrine that there is no supernatural realm; and therefore if man is to have a G.o.d at all, Nature must be that G.o.d.

To contend, as so many do, that "true religion" must be based upon the existence of a supernatural realm, no matter whether or not such a realm exists, is as absurd as to contend that "true morality" must be based upon man's "free-will" no matter whether or not man has "free-will."

Spinoza's system has been called pantheistic. But it is pantheistic only in the sense that whatever man considers G.o.dlike must be found in Nature, for no other realm exists, and there are no G.o.ds.

But the question is always raised, how is it possible to love a Being indifferent to our human miseries and blind to our hopes? How is even an intellectual love of such a Being possible? Man, as his religions show, wants G.o.d to be a father, a protector, One who cherishes man's desires and cares for his wants. The least anthropomorphic of religions wants G.o.d to be the depository of abstract human ideals. But Spinoza's G.o.d is not even as human as this. Nature does not const.i.tute the ideal type for man.

Religion is, it is true, man's search for comfort and security in an alien and hostile world. The simple demand of the human heart is to be recognized and to be loved. Love is the magic touch that transforms all that is barren and cold into all that is rich and warm and fruitful. But man is neither loved nor recognized by the immensities of the universe.

And in face of the illimitable stretches of time and s.p.a.ce even the stoutest heart involuntarily quakes. We cannot consider the vast power of the universe without feeling crushed and becoming despondent. And ignorant man cannot see in the finite things about him the full expression of the infinite beyond. He cannot derive any moral strength or comfort from the world about him because he conceives that world to be an implacable instrument of a G.o.d's uncertain, inexplicable will. He therefore cosmically projects, in a frenzy of despair, his crying human demand. And out of the wastes of s.p.a.ce there arises for him a personal G.o.d.

Anthropomorphic religions reveal man at his weakest, not at his best.

Man's true grandeur is shown when he transcends by his own power of mind his insistent human desires. He can then stand free before the Almighty.

He may tremble, but he is not afraid. For his strength of soul is grounded not in the external world but in his own ideal. If we are born under a lucky star, and are fortunate and happy lovers of the ideal, the ecstasy of the mystic's beatific vision is ours. But even if we are born under an unlucky star, and are misfortunate and unhappy lovers of the ideal, we still have the ideal to which we can hold fast and save ourselves from being shattered in our despairs, from dying in spirit, which is far more terrible than any death in the body could possibly be.

We have the ideal to give us the strength, if we are lovers of G.o.d, to go to the cross with Jesus; or, if we are lovers of Virtue, to drink the hemlock with Socrates.

The intellectual love of G.o.d is a devotion purged of all fear, of all vain regrets and even vainer hopes. The wild and angry emotions of sorrow and pain leave the strong and n.o.ble heart of man like the tidal waves leave the scattered rocks of the sh.o.r.e. As the rocks, when the waves return to their depths, smile securely in the glistening sun in the sky, so does the brave, free heart of man, when the pa.s.sionate deluge is spent, smile serenely in the face of G.o.d. The free man is born neither to weep nor to laugh but to view with calm and steadfast mind the eternal nature of things.

To know the eternal is the immortality we enjoy. But to know the eternal we must forget about ourselves. We must cease to be consumed by a cancerous anxiety to endure in time and be permanent in s.p.a.ce. In the order of Nature our own particular lives are of no especial importance.

And unless we recognize this, we are necessarily doomed to a miserable fate. We must recognize that our mere selves can never give us ultimate fulfillment or blessedness of soul. Only by losing ourselves in Nature or G.o.d can we escape the wretchedness of finitude and find the final completion and salvation of our lives. This, the free man understands.

He knows how insignificant he is in the order of Nature. But he also knows that if only he can lose himself in Nature or G.o.d then, in his own insignificant particularity, the eternal and infinite order of Nature can be displayed. For in the finite is the infinite expressed, and in the temporal, the eternal.

It is this knowledge that makes man free, that breaks the finite fetters from his soul enabling him to embrace the infinite and to possess eternity. Once man is reconciled to the petty worth of his own person, he a.s.sumes some of the majestic worth of the universe. And the austere sublimity of soul that inscribes on the grave of the beloved _G.o.d is Love_, inscribes, when it is chastened and purified by understanding, on the grave of all that is merely human _Nature is Great_. Religion is the joy and peace and strength that is all understanding.

JOSEPH RATNER.

FIRST PART

ON G.o.d

_The mult.i.tude, ever p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tion, and caring more for the shreds of antiquity than for eternal truths, pays homage to the Books of the Bible, rather than to the Word of G.o.d._

SPINOZA.

CHAPTER I

OF SUPERSt.i.tION[1]

Men would never be superst.i.tious, if they could govern all their circ.u.mstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very p.r.o.ne to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though few, I believe, know their own nature; no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in prosperity, are so over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every pa.s.ser-by. No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair--if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the G.o.ds or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superst.i.tion for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice.

Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically.

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superst.i.tion's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from G.o.d: upbraiding reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though G.o.d has turned away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!

Superst.i.tion, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. If any one desire an example, let him take Alexander, who only began superst.i.tiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learned to fear fortune in the pa.s.ses of Sysis (Curtius v. 4); whereas after he had conquered Darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. When the Scythians were provoking a battle, the Bactrians had deserted, and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more turned to superst.i.tion, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue of affairs with sacrificed victims." Very numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact, that only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superst.i.tion; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.

The origin of superst.i.tion above given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of G.o.d, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is to maintain in the same course men p.r.o.ne to every form of credulity. For, as the ma.s.s of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never a.s.sents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty which has yet proved illusive.

This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superst.i.tion," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as G.o.ds, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people--a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with.

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted.

Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred and cruelty. If deeds only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pa.s.s free, such seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and fast line.

Now seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where every one's judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship G.o.d as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure....

I have often wondered that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come to such a pa.s.s that one can only p.r.o.nounce a man Christian, Turk, Jew, or Heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a particular sect--as for manner of life, it is in all cases the same. Inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact, that the ministries of the Church are regarded by the ma.s.ses merely as dignities, her offices as posts of emolument--in short, popular religion may be summed up as a respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this misconception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing G.o.d's religion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church became a theater, where orators, instead of church teachers harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the mult.i.tude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices--aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! Piety, great G.o.d! and religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, I say, these of all men, are thought, Oh lie most horrible! to possess light from on High. Verily, if they had but one spark of light from on High, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship G.o.d more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents' souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compa.s.sion.

Furthermore, if any Divine light were in them, it would appear from their doctrine. I grant that they are never tired of professing their wonder at the profound mysteries of Holy Writ; still I cannot discover that they teach anything but speculation of Platonists and Aristotelians, to which (in order to save their credit of Christianity) they have made Holy Writ conform; not content to rave with the Greeks themselves, they want to make the prophets rave also; showing conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught a glimpse of Scripture's Divine nature. The very vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly attests, that their belief in the Bible is a formal a.s.sent rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of Scripture, the principle that it is in every pa.s.sage true and divine. Such a doctrine should be reached only after strict scrutiny and thorough comprehension of the Sacred Books (which would teach it much better, for they stand in need of no human fictions), and not be set up on the threshold, as it were, of inquiry.

As I pondered over the facts that the light of reason is not only despised, but by many even execrated as a source of impiety, that human commentaries are accepted as divine records, and that credulity is extolled as faith; as I marked the fierce controversies of philosophers raging in Church and State, the source of bitter hatred and dissension, the ready instruments of sedition and other ills innumerable, I determined to examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit, making no a.s.sumptions concerning it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which I do not find clearly therein set down....

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From the Preface to the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_.

CHAPTER II

OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE[2]

When people declare, as all are ready to do, that the Bible is the Word of G.o.d teaching men true blessedness and the way of salvation, they evidently do not mean what they say; for the ma.s.ses take no pains at all to live according to Scripture, and we see most people endeavoring to hawk about their own commentaries as the word of G.o.d, and giving their best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others to think as they do: we generally see, I say, theologians anxious to learn how to wring their inventions and sayings out of the sacred text, and to fortify them with Divine authority. Such persons never display less scruple and more zeal than when they are interpreting Scripture or the mind of the Holy Ghost; if we ever see them perturbed, it is not that they fear to attribute some error to the Holy Spirit, and to stray from the right path, but that they are afraid to be convicted of error by others, and thus to overthrow and bring into contempt their own authority. But if men really believe what they verbally testify of Scripture, they would adopt quite a different plan of life: their minds would not be agitated by so many contentions, nor so many hatreds, and they would cease to be excited by such a blind and rash pa.s.sion for interpreting the sacred writings, and excogitating novelties in religion. On the contrary, they would not dare to adopt, as the teaching of Scripture, anything which they could not plainly deduce therefrom: lastly, these sacrilegious persons who have dared, in several pa.s.sages, to interpolate the Bible, would have shrunk from so great a crime, and would have stayed their sacrilegious hands.

Ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so powerful, that religion is thought to consist, not so much in respecting the writings of the Holy Ghost, as in defending human commentaries, so that religion is no longer identified with charity, but with spreading discord and propagating insensate hatred disguised under the name of zeal for the Lord, and eager ardor.

To these evils we must add superst.i.tion, which teaches men to despise reason and Nature, and only to admire and venerate that which is repugnant to both: whence it is not wonderful that for the sake of increasing the admiration and veneration felt for Scripture, men strive to explain it so as to make it appear to contradict, as far as possible, both one and the other: thus they dream that most profound mysteries lie hid in the Bible, and weary themselves out in the investigation of these absurdities, to the neglect of what is useful. Every result of their diseased imagination they attribute to the Holy Ghost, and strive to defend with the utmost zeal and pa.s.sion; for it is an observed fact that men employ their reason to defend conclusions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at by the pa.s.sions are defended by the pa.s.sions.

If we would separate ourselves from the crowd and escape from theological prejudices, instead of rashly accepting human commentaries for Divine doc.u.ments, we must consider the true method of interpreting Scripture and dwell upon it at some length: for if we remain in ignorance of this we cannot know, certainly, what the Bible and the Holy Spirit wish to teach.

I may sum up the matter by saying that the method of interpreting Scripture does not widely differ from the method of interpreting Nature--in fact, it is almost the same. For as the interpretation of Nature consists in the examination of the history of Nature, and therefrom deducing definitions of natural phenomena on certain fixed axioms, so Scriptural interpretation proceeds by the examination of Scripture, and inferring the intention of its authors as a legitimate conclusion from its fundamental principles. By working in this manner every one will always advance without danger of error--that is, if they admit no principles for interpreting Scripture, and discussing its contents save such as they find in Scripture itself--and will be able with equal security to discuss what surpa.s.ses our understanding, and what is known by the natural light of reason.

In order to make clear that such a method is not only correct, but is also the only one advisable, and that it agrees with that employed in interpreting Nature, I must remark that Scripture very often treats of matters which cannot be deduced from principles known to reason: for it is chiefly made up of narratives and revelation: the narratives generally contain miracles--that is, [as we shall show in a later chapter], relations of extraordinary natural occurrences adapted to the opinions and judgment of the historians who recorded them: the revelations also were adapted to the opinions of the prophets and in themselves surpa.s.sed human comprehension. Therefore the knowledge of all these--that is, of nearly the whole contents of Scripture, must be sought from Scripture alone, even as the knowledge of nature is sought from nature. As for the moral doctrines which are also contained in the Bible, they may be demonstrated from received axioms, but we cannot prove in the same manner that Scripture intended to teach them, this can only be learned from Scripture itself.