Art. 5.-SPINOZA, GOETHE, AND THE MODERNS.

1. Benoît de Spinoza. By P. L. Couchoud. Paris: Alcan, 1902.

2. Spinoza and Religion. By Elmer Ellsworth Powell. London: Kegan Paul, 1906.

3. Spinoza; A Handbook to the Ethics. By James A. Picton. London: Constable, 1907.

4. Spinoza's Leben, Werke und Lehre. By Kuno Fischer. Heidelberg: Winter, 1909.

5. Science et Religion. By Émile Boutroux.

Paris: Flammarion, 1908. Translation by J. Nield. London: Duckworth, 1909.

6. Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man and his Wellbeing. By A. Wolf. London: Black, 1910.

7. Spinoza. By the Rt Hon. Sir F. Pollock. New edition. London: Duckworth, 1912.

And other works.

SPINOZA has been called the Father of Modern Thought; but modern Spinozaism was not brought to the birth till 1780 in the memorable conversation between Lessing and Jacobi, in the course of which the former said that there is no other philosophy than the philosophy of Spinoza. However, the year after that saw the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,' which, in producing a complete revolution in philosophic thought, eclipsed Spinoza for a time. It was left for the nineteenth century to do full justice to his philosophy; and at no time, perhaps, has his influence been greater than at the present moment. Spinoza, as M. Renan said in his address at the unveiling of the monument erected to his honour at The Hague in 1877, was far in advance of his age. His independence of thought, his utter freedom from religious bias, his determination to yield to no other authority but the majesty of truth,' his original treatment of the science of Ethics, his boundless unselfishness,' that so powerfully affected Goethe-all these qualities appeal in a remarkable degree to modern thought, while his idealised naturalism proves specially attractive to modern men of science. Less aggressive in the statement of his original ideas than his contemporary

Hobbes-they were born on the same day--or some modern scientific dogmatists professing to be his disciples, he yet approaches very closely the modern standpoint in his determinism, while he denies final causes, calling teleology the asylum of ignorance. At the same time he retains a firm belief in the causa causarum, i.e. 'mechanical causation' plus the Divine immanence animating the Cosmos, and thus in his philosophical system paves the way for the new Theism.

Spinoza adumbrates the modern theory, accepted by the late Prof. Clifford, that thought is an attribute of the universe conceived of as at once material and spiritual. Though a freethinker and a determinist, he was almost ascetic in his austere simplicity. One of the first to disassociate virtue from religion, he lived the life of a saint; and, in spite of his denial of the supernatural, he yet displays a singular leaning towards piety like that of the mystics, with whom he had much in common. Indeed Victor Cousin, who has done so much in rehabilitating Spinozaism, speaks of the Ethic' as at bottom a mystical poem. It was from Spinoza, too, that the late Prof. Paulsen derived his theory of idealistic pantheism, as explained in his lectures on Spinoza twenty years ago; and it is to him that Prof. Haeckel traces his conception of the monistic creed of science.'

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'We adhere firmly' (he says)' to the pure, unequivocal monism of Spinoza. Matter, or infinitely-extended substance, and Spirit (or Energy), or sensitive and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes or principal properties of the all-embracing divine essence of the world, the universal substance.' (Riddle of the Universe,' cap. I.)

Thus the primeval unity of Spinoza becomes 'le Dieu des savants,' supplanting the conception of the 'Opifex Deus which proved so attractive to the eighteenth century Deists, who vilified Spinoza as an atheist without studying or understanding him. True, the unknowable and eternal substance forms the basis of religion and morality in Spinoza's scheme; yet he is not an atheist, since with him extension and thought, the two attributes of Substance, are also the attributes of God, who is the great reality in the transitory order of things, 'Deus est summe constans in suis operibus.' In this, again, Spinoza anticipates the

Moderns, notably Lotze, and becomes, as one of his critics says, 'the herald of the modern era.'

Spinoza has also much in common with the Stoics, for the Stoic doctrine of the 'animus mundi,' permeating all material things, corresponds to his own belief in the Divine Immanence. Again, modern Stoicism, in making the preservation and cultivation of man's higher self in the interests of our common humanity the chief aim of existence, closely resembles Spinoza's scheme of life. In his cheerful acceptance of the inevitable in the order of things, he is a Stoic. His happiness of spirit is not only the 'gaieté' of 'l'homme généreux' of his contemporary Descartes, but rather that of 'l'homme libre,' whose chief aim is the complete liberation of the mind from the entanglement of the senses and the disturbing influence of the passions, the complete emancipation, in short, from individualistic selfishness. His conatus, or desire to live, in which some see the germ of our modern idea of the struggle for existence, as opposed to the pessimistic negation of existence, is the rational effort of each individual to work out his destiny in the universe, finding in God the infinite complement of our fragmentary life.'

Again, though Spinoza can scarcely be called an agnostic-for his intellect was positivist rather than sceptical, approaching at times a higher form of dogmatism-he admits that the ideas we form on the totality of being are inadequate. Yet he speaks of the felicity of those who know God, by which knowledge we are attracted to do only those things which love and piety suggest.' It is this which made Novalis speak of him as the God-intoxicated man,' and led Tennyson to say that he is so full of God that he sees Him everywhere.' For this reason, too, Spinoza repels the charge of irreligion as a gross and malicious calumny.

'Does he' (he writes in a letter to Oosten)' cast off all religion who affirms that God is to be accepted as the highest good, and, as such, is to be loved with a liberated soul; and that in this only consists our highest happiness and freedom? More, that the reward of virtue is virtue itself, and the punishment of folly and weakness is nothing else but folly itself, and finally that every man's duty is to love his neighbour and to obey the commands of the supreme power?'

It was Spinoza's audacity in his natural interpretation of the Bible, his denial of miracles, and his freedom of speculation generally, which brought him into conflict with the upholders of traditional beliefs. The Tractatus Theologico-politicus' is called by Leibniz an unbearably freethinking book'; and the enemies of de Witt, Spinoza's friend and protector, speak of it as 'forged in hell by a renegade Jew and the devil.' Spinoza has been called the greatest of modern Jews, as St Augustine has been called the first of modern men, because both deal with religion intellectually, i.e. with the help of natural reason. He even approaches the Modernist standpoint, for Modernism, in its wider signification, concerns itself less with conventional forms of belief than with the adaptation of the religious spirit, in accordance with the ascertained truths of science, to the realities and requirements of daily life and duty. As in the seventeenth century a more liberal theology struggled into existence with the emergence of the new philosophy of Descartes and Spinoza, so modern Spinozaism, abandoning the old idea of the 'spatial transcendence of the Deity,' believes in the immediate activity of God in nature, including human nature; or, as George Tyrrell in his 'Christianity at the Cross-Roads' (p. 110) puts it, only so far as the absolute is also immanent, and mingles with the world's progress, can religion have an object.'

In the same way, recognising the fact that the great problems of our day have their root in ethical soil, modern Spinozaism is inclined to identify ethics with religion; Spinoza himself might have said, with one of his spiritual ancestors, Maimonides, 'My religion enjoins me to believe nothing, but to think the truth and to practise goodness. If I find any hindrance in this from external circumstances, it is not my fault. I do all that lies in my power.' And his influence is clearly seen in the efforts of modern moralists to combine the principle of selfpreservation with that of self-renunciation, of persistent well-doing with cheerful resignation. The great and guiding landmarks of a wise life are, indeed, few and simple-to do our duty; to avoid useless sorrow; to acquiesce patiently in the inevitable.' These words, taken from Lecky's Map of Life,' contain in nuce the practical outcome of Spinoza's 'Ethic.'

As a strenuous advocate of civil and religious freedom Spinoza is in full agreement with the moderns, as well as in his preference for constitutional government. As against Hobbes, he stands for human solidarity and universal brotherhood, following in this respect the republican ideal of the Stoics. Hence the importance attached in his system to the training of the intellect so as to attain to a rational view of the harmony of interests between the individual and the community. Nor does he lose sight of the practical side of social idealism. It is not enough,' he says in the 'Tractatus Politicus,' 'to point out what ought to be; we must also point out what can be, so that everyone may receive his due without depriving others of what is due to them.'

For this and similar reasons Spinozaism is not only a formal system of metaphysics, but a philosophy of life: and as such it has entered into the current of modern life and culture. It is this which makes it so intensely interesting, quite apart from the attractive character of Spinoza himself. Coleridge and Wordsworth naturalised him in this country, and secured for him an honoured place as the inaugurator of Nature-worship. Shelley had some intention of translating the 'Tractatus Theologicopoliticus'; and we may see traces of Spinozaism in such lines as these:

'Spirit of Nature! thou

Life of interminable multitudes,

Soul of those mighty spheres

Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie';

or, again, in those which recall Spinoza's view of humanity as the permanent manifestation of the immutable order of the universe:

'Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own Divine control

Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea.'

Tennyson in his high pantheism, as in 'Vastness,' and Blake, of whom it has been said that, whilst he was proclaiming the essential spirituality of matter, he was at the same moment asserting and revelling in that physical nature which was for him not the symbol, but the very substance of the spiritual,' were more or less