Baruch Spinoza

This, the most wonderful of all philosophers, the most daring, the most scientific, was born, a little Jew of Portuguese descent, in Amsterdam on November 28th, 1632, at a time when the European world was riven by the fiercest sectarian contention; when the hounds of the Spanish Inquisition were baying hell-fire and destruction to any man who should dare to differ from the dogmas of the pope as to objective truth. He grew up to be a typical Oriental—like Jesus Himself—with all the Oriental powers of mysticism.

Desirous of completing his knowledge of Latin, he took lessons from a certain doctor of medicine, one Van den Ende, who eked out his income by taking pupils. Whether the worthy Van den Ende employed his spare time by inoculating Spinoza with what Hume afterwards called his “hideous atheistical doctrines” is not apparently known; but it seems certain that Spinoza thus early came under the influence of that series of ideas which so many people have complained ofas “medical materialism,” whatever that may mean. Ignorant people have, from the very earliest times, complained that doctors have no religion; that we only look upon the materialist side of man; that we are blind to ethical truth and to the eternal verities of Plato. This, of course, is sheer nonsense. It is quite true that few, if any, doctors have been burned at the stake for a point of belief; but that is simply because the medical profession has always preferred, if burning were in the question, to be burned for something that could be proved objectively, such as the difference between scarlet fever and cancer, for instance, and not because of an opinion that apparently depends upon a state of mind or upon the education that any given man has received, or upon the surroundings in which he grew up.

It is said that Van den Ende had a daughter with whom Spinoza fell in love; but the critics have cast so many doubts upon the pretty romance that has been woven between them that nowadays it is not generally believed. Some rash words of Spinoza’s having come to the ears of the authorities of the synagogue, they summoned him before them to explain; but, seeing that he had already parted in very truth from the conventional Hebrew worship, and not wishing tohave any public scandal among the community, the Chief Rabbi offered him a pension of 1,000 florins if he would outwardly conform and appear occasionally in the synagogue; that is to say, if Spinoza would turn hypocrite. But this was not at all in accordance with Spinoza’s character, so, since he refused to be coerced, it became necessary to excommunicate him from the synagogue after an unavailing attempt had been made by some footpad to assassinate him. Spinoza drew up a protest against his excommunication, but did not publish it. He dropped the name of Baruch and took the name of Benedict; in this possibly there may have been a shimmer of irony at his excommunication, for both names mean “blessed.” Such irony would be in accordance with what one might expect from a pupil of Van den Ende, who in truth seems to have been an ironical man. Later, he fell into trouble with the French authorities in Paris, and was hanged for a conspirator. Van den Ende seems to have been a very undoctor-like sort of doctor, for it is seldom indeed that any of our profession conspire with anybody; least of all for a religious or political purpose. Marat, of course, was a brilliant exception, but he came to an untimely end.

Expelled from the Hebrew Church, and withthe Inquisition waiting open-mouthed to burn him if it had the chance, Spinoza spent the rest of his short life in little towns of Holland, keeping himself alive by grinding spectacles. The tubercle bacillus was already beginning to eat away his lungs, and men howled at him as an atheist whenever he went into the street. But already he had many admirers. A man named De Fries left him a small fortune which Spinoza refused, saying that the man’s brother and rightful heir had more need of it than he. The brother accepted it on the sole condition that Spinoza should take sufficient money to keep him alive. Even of this, which was offered on the assumption that Spinoza would need 500 florins, he would only accept 300 florins annually, and gave the rest to the poor.

During the five years following his excommunication Spinoza worked hard at his philosophical speculations, and at his lens-grinding, attaining a great reputation for thoroughness in his work. A little society of doctors and medical students was formed to study the Cartesian philosophy, and by sheer learning, daring of speculation, and elevation of moral character, the little Hebrew became the leader; and thus began the extraordinary admiration for the philosophy ofSpinoza which has always distinguished biological scientists.

Spinoza attained eminence in many ways before the end came. His landlady, a Madame van den Spyek, came to him in a religious difficulty. She knew that Spinoza was good and learned, though peopledidcall him an atheist, and went saying what a sorry time he would have of it when the Inquisition got hold of him. Yet she heard so much about the different sects, which were struggling so fiercely all over Europe. What was she, a decent and pious woman who worshipped God after the manner of her fathers, to believe? She would ask the gentle and learned atheist; so she went diffidently to him and opened her heart to him. Thus spake Spinoza: “Your religion is a good religion, madame; you have no need to seek after another, and neither need you doubt of your eternal welfare so long as, with due pious observances, you continue to live a life of peace and charity with all.”

Just so might have spoken T. H. Huxley two hundred years later; just so might have spoken Plato two thousand years earlier; so assuredly would not have spoken Bishop Tertullian, who said, two hundred years after the crucifixion of a loving and forgiving Jesus, “Credo quia impossibile,”and rejoiced to think that those who differed from him in opinions were safely frizzling in hell.

Spinoza, in his strenuous devotion to scientific truth, knowing nothing about the tiny rod-shaped bacillus that was growing in his lungs, led a most unhealthy life. Sometimes for three months together his footsteps would not cross the lintel; he lived a life of asceticism worthy of Nietzsche himself, or of a monk of the Thebaid, though for a very different reason. Eating just enough to keep him alive and no more, cheerful and merry with his friends, averse from all political and religious contention, he was proud of only one thing—his self-control. People said that he used to be vastly amused by setting two spiders to fight one another. Of course this story really represents Spinoza’s interest in the weird marriage rights of the Arachnidæ. These are really extraordinarily interesting, and many a thoughtful man has followed them, with the aid of an electric torch, in the dusk of the evening when the sexes conjoin. The female is considerably larger and more powerful than the male; and she sits quietly waiting with a naughty gleam in her bright eyes, at the centre of the web. He, insignificant despicable wretch, dances timidly towards her, twoof his paws held out with the caution of a professional pugilist. They meet, he continuing his excessive caution. Then a moment of love, an almost imperceptible caress, and he flees literally for his life with hell at his heels. Should the dutiful wife catch him, woe worth the day for the husband. The wicked creature, having sated her sinful lust, devours him, claw, spinnerets and all. Marriage from the point of view of a spider must be an exciting business. I do not know what are the odds on the escape of the male; but doubtless Spinoza worked them out from his own observations. Personally I should fancy that the male has about an even chance. I have often watched among the mosquitoes only to find after an hour that the male could not approach at all, dare he never so wisely. But I have seen horrid orgies of cannibalism should the husband be a shade too slow. It is feminismin excelsis; she, great, big, hulking brute that she is, cannibalistically eats her dear little mate with his slender and spiderly grace. And likes to do it, too. Fabre thought that it was a sort of religious rite among the Arachnidæ; but let us think better of the race of spiders than that. I have no doubt whatever that it was while Spinoza was watching the spiders at their cannibalistic love-making that the amazingspectacle of the presence of so much cruelty in Nature thrust itself before his mind, and led him to speculate why he, too, a man so good and virtuous, who had never harmed a single living creature in his life, should yet be so ill and coughing and sweating and spitting and falling away to a shadow. It was then probably that he evolved his stately system of pantheism that has so impressed the scientific world. Why should the performance of a purely natural function, one which God has implanted in the spiders that they might propagate their species, be attended with such savagery? This story about Spinoza is told by Dr. Colerus, the Lutheran divine who afterwards became his biographer. Naturally Colerus misunderstood Spinoza’s scientific enthusiasm, and equally naturally Spinoza, being accused of atheism, was also accused of cruelty as monstrous as that of Domitian in his most palmy days. An atheist in the seventeenth century was known to be capable of all.

There is really little more to tell about the short life of Spinoza. He was offered a post at the University of Heidelberg as professor of philosophy, but politely declined on the score of his health. Probably he did so really because he did not care to set himself in a position where aturn of the wheel of war might put him at the mercy of the hounds of the Inquisition, with their burnings and tortures andauto da fe’sand religious wars. The real call to join his spirit with that of the Immanent God came when he was forty-two years old in 1674. However deeply a man may speculate upon “God, Man, and his well-being”—to name only one of his works—the tubercle bacillus takes no heed of motives, and will ever be ready to attack him if he denies himself food and fresh air. Thus it was that his friends of The Hague went quietly to church one afternoon, doubtless thinking nothing of the troublesome cough from which he had suffered for so long; and that when they returned they did not hear his cheerful voice, for he was lying dead at his spectacle grinding.

He had a short life; we can sum it up in a few words: Spinoza was a good man and he died poor. When they came to look into his effects they found nothing but a very little money, just enough to satisfy his creditors; the tools of his trade and a few lenses, which were afterwards sold as being of great intrinsic value because he had ground them so well.

It was many years before the real worth of the little Hebrew began to dawn upon the world;and then it was not the doctors nor the scientific men to whom it appealed but the poets, for like all true poets he was a mystic. During the eighteenth century, until the French Revolution began to free men’s minds, he was looked upon as an atheist, and even the good-natured Hume, possibly ironically, spoke of his hideous atheistical doctrine. But the poets, in the ecstasy of joy that accompanied the liberation of mankind, saw far otherwise. Goethe begun to understand him, and Novalis, the German hymn-writer, spoke famously of him as a “God-intoxicated man”; a man drunk with the intellectual love of God. Indeed, the very word “love” is too carnal a term to apply to Spinoza’s philosophy. It was probably some such feeling that led people to hesitate deeply before changing the ancient terms “Faith, Hope, and Charity” into “Faith, Hope, and Love,” although Spinoza in his mysticism, and our modern mystic, Professor Freud,[27]would have approved it.

After Novalis came Coleridge and Wordsworth; and thenceforward Spinoza’s fame began rapidly to extend, until it has influenced thewhole of modern thought. Benjamin Jowett, in one of his biological sermons delivered in Edinburgh, the home of Calvinism, spoke of him as one of the best men who ever lived, and compared his life to that of John Bunyan, sorrowfully admitting that the tinker would probably have burnt the spectacle-grinder if they could have met.

Like Jowett, Dean Inge also has been touched by the wonder of Baruch the Jew. “Beatitudo non est premium virtutis, sed ipsa virtus,” said Spinoza. “Heaven,” repeats Dean Inge, “is not therewardof virtue; it is virtue itself.” And again speaking of Spinoza, he says, “No thoroughgoing rationalist philosophy can explain the working of a mind in love.”

Accepting as proved that Spinoza’s philosophy has enormously influenced the modern world, let us consider what it really is. Spinoza’s pantheism does not consist, as so many amiable spiritualists seem to think, of a kindly God of mystic light, surrounded by a fluttering crowd of disembodied spirits with a general atmosphere of worship throughout the universe. It is a highly mystical and rather stern philosophy which leads to surprising results and best explains the known facts of life. God is infinite, with attributes ofextension and thought; therefore He must embrace all good and all evil. As He is infinite He must be coterminous with the universe in which there can be nothing else but God. In fact, God is reality. God is the universe. Christ, in Spinoza’s view, is a mystical conception Who includes all the gentleness, all the wisdom, all the loving-kindness, of the world. He is the method by which God communicated His will to man. Putting it briefly, Spinoza was a complete monist, who made no distinction whatever between spirit and matter.

The further we extend scientific inquiry the more we confirm Spinoza’s views of the universe. Nebulæ have been discovered whose light takes a million years to reach the earth; so also did Spinoza account for the existence of evil in the world, that it could only exist because God allowed it, and as we cannot understand why God should allow it, the natural corollary must be that it is a part of Himself. As his fellow-Jew Heine said: “All our modern philosophers, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, see through the glasses that Baruch Spinoza ground.”

Spinoza began the revolt against the orthodox conception of a fall from virtue on the part of man; and he was strongly supported by the doctrineof evolution which was the greatest contribution of the nineteenth century to thought. One would have thought that there could be no single educated man in the world to-day who does not firmly believe that man has ascended from an ape-like animal, for one has only to stroll around any decent museum to see the irrefragable proofs in the skulls and prehistoric remains of man who lived far beyond recorded time, long before man had learned to speak or to act with his fellow-man in societies. Yet to this day some obscurantists try to prohibit the teaching of natural selection; as if it mattered! In spite of them natural selection will go on triumphant, however the wilfully blind may rage. But we have passed beyond the stage of natural selection so far as man is concerned. We now live in the age of intellect, the psychozoic age. The little naked, helpless creature that had so stern a fight for existence against the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros has developed a brain such as never was in the world before, and that brain is beginning to take a hand in nature’s game. Evolution is proceeding, not by tooth and claw, not by ravening and bloodshed, but by the discoveries of such men as Luther Burbank, who has revolutionised horticulture; of Henry Ford, who hasrevolutionised transport; and of our own Australian Farrar, who, by revolutionising wheat-growing, has made it possible for two blades of wheat to grow where one grew before. In the world of ideas evolution is proceeding by the thoughts of such men as Darwin, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and thousands of young biologists. The brain of man will work towards perfection possibly by birth control, sterilisation of the unfit, and beyond all by the elimination of syphilis.

The process of evolution towards righteousness was interrupted for five sad years by the World War, which was due to a stupid misunderstanding of that very doctrine of evolution to which Spinoza’s philosophy had pointed the way. But pantheism must be looked upon, not as a religion, but as a scientific philosophy. As a religion it does not satisfy the heart of man.

Eternity, according to Spinoza, is not merely a long time: it is really a mode of thought, and cannot be reduced to measurements of time. That is strangely like what one hears from countless pulpits to-day, if the occupants thereof have opened their ears to modern thought. We are living in eternity to-day, and should act as if our actions were to be eternal. Still speaking mystically, heaven is to be a good man; hell is to bea bad man. There can be nothing worse even if we do know what is happening to us after death. And no better man ever lived upon the earth than the despised little Jew, Spinoza. Except for fear of being accused of perpetrating an epigram upon a most solemn subject, I might say that it is better to be God-intoxicated with Spinoza than priest-intoxicated with the various unphysiological Christian creeds. T. H. Huxley, who was accused of all sorts of nonsense, recognised that it was necessary to create an ideal Jesus for man, because, as the critics have shown, owing to the intervention of very imperfect men, we do not really know what were His real teachings; still, we must make an ideal for ourselves; and for every man his own religion must lie between himself and his God, or it is no religion. But so long as it leads to tolerance, mercy, loving-kindness, and duty, he cannot go far wrong. All these things were taught by Spinoza, and, so far as we know, by Jesus Christ.

But possibly the recent discovery of the unconscious mind may have cast a doubt even upon the stately pantheism of Spinoza. Possibly what he took to be the attributes of God are in reality purely human conceptions. Possibly animals, being so much more under the influence of theunconscious mind than men are, do not feel as we do, and there may not be so much cruelty in the world as we suppose. We know that in men the unconscious mind was the first to be evolved, and certainly it is the last to die.[28]To that extent at least may we give thanks to God, and as George Santayana says in his essay on Spinoza to all the little men who have sneered at Spinoza: “I do not believe you; God is great.”

But if Spinoza was the greatest of philosophers we must also remember that he was one of the first, if not the very first, of the critics of the Bible who endeavoured to see that wonderful book through clear glasses, through spectacles that were properly ground, because he had ground them himself. He had not the advantage of modern physiology and psychology, whereby we know that a book, written by men in a state of semi-savagery, such as Moses and the other supposed authors of the Pentateuch, must reflect their semi-savage minds and the thickened cerebral arteries which must have been theirs if they were so old as tradition states. None the less he came to very much the same conclusions as have been reached by the mostlearned and scientific of modern commentators. As the doctrine of evolution has cast a doubt amounting to certainty upon the story of creation, so Spinoza, by reason of his intellectual love of God, has cast a doubt upon the theory of a personal God, of an all-wise and all-loving Father. The existence of evil in the world, so ever-present, so clamant, so insistent, by itself disproves the existence of such a personality. Where was the fatherly God of the deists when the late war broke out? Perchance he slept or was gone on a journey. Such an absentee God is no God for modern man. By recognising that evil, if, and so far as it exists, must be part of God himself, Spinoza fell in absolutely with modern thought, only he lived three hundred years too soon. But the discovery, or hypothesis, of the unconscious mind, has had still more startling effects upon philosophy; for who can now say that he is not unconsciously listening to the voice of his grandmother when he is formulating his most earnest conclusions? Those sanguine persons, mostly politicians who state proudly that they are satisfied to remain undisturbed with the beliefs that they have learned at their mother’s knee, are probably unconsciously retailing the beliefs that she in herturn learned from her mother, and she from hers. Beliefs acquired in very early youth remain till the end of life as if they were divine; Gibbon has shown the debt that the early Church owed to women, who were doubtless the contemporary mothers and grandmothers and had the maternal mind; dear, amiable, credulous, superstitious creatures they were, though perhaps a trifle narrow-minded. Undoubtedly these women were not persons of critical and scientific mind, though to every one of their sons and grandsons they must have seemed to speak with awful “respectability,” just as old ladies do to this very day. It has been very well said that whenever one feels a conviction of absolute certainty approximating to the divine, one is probably listening to the still small voice of the “herd” speaking through one’s unconscious memory; and common experience is that the herd generally speaks most emphatically through the dulcet tones of that dear old lady, that real transmitter of the herd ideas of past generations, the grandmother.She, not Spinoza, nor Nietzsche, nor Darwin, nor Schopenhauer, has been the real maker of thought to the present day.

Let Spinoza and Nietzsche go hang as abominations unto the Lord, atheists and capable ofthe utmost wickedness—butnotof sectarian wars and wholesale tortures and burnings. And as for Voltaire—one simply shudders at his ribaldry and irrepressible mockery of so-called religion which caused savage persecution in the name of the best and most merciful of men—Jesus Christ. To that extent at leastl’infamehas passed away, largely owing to Voltaire, though personally he could not have been a very nice man if all tales are true. But certain sects are still willing to apply another form of torture than thumbscrew, rack and stake to those who dare to differ in opinion from their grandmothers.

I see that I have omitted the most mystical of Spinoza’s conceptions. God, besides having the attributes mentioned, has infinite substance. That was really why they turned him out of the synagogue, and would have liked to burn him if they could. The idea of giving a body to God whom St. John defined as an emotion! God isLove! Nowadays the identification of matter with electricity and the modern conception of the ether is the nearest that science can reach to Spinoza’s dreamings, but that in no way detracts from his extraordinary insight into the universe. Even taking Spinozism in its most material aspect, we find that the more we extendthe bounds of the known universe the greater it becomes, until infinity seems to become rather more than a mere mathematical conception denoted by a mathematical symbol.

What we gain from Spinoza then—and the best of men, the best of the clergy, agree—is that eternity is a state of mind; that is to say, it is a purely human conception. Perhaps if we go further and say that good and evil, instead of being attributes of the infinite God, are also purely human conceptions, we shall come still nearer to absolute truth.

But quite clearly the notion of God as an all-wise and all-loving Father is inconsistent with medical experience. The only decent thing nature has done for man is to give us our unconscious minds, without which we should be stunned and maddened by the intolerable thunder of our hearts, the rushing through our arteries, the incessant dripping of our kidneys and even more uncomely internal parts. And the way nature has treated woman is still more shocking. Any earthly father who treated his children as nature has treated woman would be considered rather as a stepfather.

Nowadays Spinoza’s pantheism suggests to scientific men the mighty forces that lie lockedup within the atom.[29]So far as we know, the universe, however vast it may be, is, in the last resource, composed of atoms. But once again, and fifty times over, I would most strenuously say that pantheism is a philosophy: it isnota religion. It is too stern, too scientific, too consistent with known facts, ever to attract the countless bruised hearts, relics of the late war, longing for comfort in their grief.

Even otherwise intelligent men often ask me whether theReligio Mediciof Sir Thomas Browne really represents the religion of modern doctors. The nearest approach to a talk about religion I have ever heard from a doctor was once when I heard one doctor say of another that he was believed to pray for his patients; but in that I seem to scent a savour of professional jealousy. Otherwise I might almost feel justified in saying thatReligio Mediciis generally considered by doctors to be a farrago of quackery, mysticism, credulity, and astrology, put into gorgeous and quite unnecessarily obscure language; full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. Probably Browne was unconsciously remembering the teachings of some oldlady who had impressed the truth upon him in his early infancy—probably with her slipper.

But I cannot close this essay upon the greatest of all philosophers better than by repeating the words of Ernest Renan upon him when they dedicated the great statue at The Hague in 1882: “Woe unto him who in passing should hurl an insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished, as all vulgar souls are punished, by his own vulgarity, and by his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man from his granite pedestal will point out to all men the way of blessedness which he had found; and ages hence the cultivated traveller, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, ‘The truest vision man ever had of God, came perhaps, here.’”

Nor can one do better than follow Spinoza so far as earthly intelligence can lead us. Those people whose hearts the war has left bruised and broken are fortunate if they can still believe what they learned at their mother’s knee. She, dear, simple, lovable soul, knew nothing about the unconscious mind, nor physiology, nor historical criticism, nor Spinoza and his majestic pantheism. All she knew was that her sons were unhappy, and she must comfort them as best shecould. Men have always been unhappy, and women have always tried to comfort them according to their sons’ needs. All good men have the same religion, and they have all learned it at their mother’s knee.[30]

Of all the philosophers who have tried to solve the awful mystery of the Infinite God, Baruch Spinoza probably came as near to it as He will ever allow.

But man must work out his own salvation, and it is not right to blame the infinite God if anything fails to happen as we desire. “Let us still cultivate our garden.”

THE END

FOOTNOTES[1]There are innumerable English synonyms for psychasthenic, mostly slang. A few are unbalanced, half-crazy, half-cracked, half-dotty, peculiar, queer, etc. But none of these expresses the exact meaning of the Greek; indeed, it is impossible absolutely to escape from medical jargon, except by a phrase.[2]Probably it was the clinical type with stupor, in which grief and the sense of sin become so overwhelming that the patient can hardly move.[3]According to Professor J. J. Welsh many ointments in use at the time contained mercury.[4]In cases resembling nymphomania that occur after childbirth we call it puerperal insanity.[5]The title was only recent. Formerly he had been called “His Grace.”[6]See how neurotic he was at the time![7]Please note that “sex” doesnotmean “sensuality.”[8]These postulates are:(a) Her supposed deformity must have been such as would allow her terrible father and her anxious mother to accept her as a daughter, although they both desperately longed for a son and heir.(b) It must have been such as would have been known to herself.(c) It could not have interfered with the ordinary physiological processes of her life.(d) It must have been such as would not interfere with her living in at least tolerable health to the age of sixty-nine.[9]If it is a science.[10]Please do not look upon this as a diagnosis; all we say positively is that the spirochæte must have affected his mind.[11]British Medical Journal, 1910.[12]Some say sixteen.[13]Much the same libels on Catherine’s physical condition were spread about her as had already been said about Elizabeth.[14]Macaulay makes such fun of the poor doctors, with many sensational adjectives, but I shall not reprint it here.[15]A Freudian would say that Frederick’s dirtiness simply represented an unconscious revolt against the tyranny of his father.[16]Probably he was some crazy fellow of the minor clergy. The whole world seems to have gone mad at this time; it only shows us what the Crusades really meant to Europe.[17]Plague and Pestilence in Art and Literature, by Raymond Crawfurd.[18]Friedlander, taking his account of it entirely from Galen, considered it to have been “petechial typhus,” or smallpox. The sanitary condition of Rome must have been perfectly frightful, and to read Friedlander makes one shudder.[19]Probably Mus Rattus, the black rat, at that time. Mus decumanus, the brown rat, does not seem to have begun to conquer the black rat till the eighteenth century.[20]Epidemics of the Middle Ages.[21]Of course this mainly refers to the poor. It is said that the serfs deforested Europe in order that their betters might have a weekly hot bath.[22]The question of the first appearance of syphilis in Europe appears to have been settled by an article in theSt. Louis Urological and Cutaneous Reviewfor 1924.[23]Probably, like so many leaders of thought, Nietzsche was of the manic-depressive temperament, with all the apparently insane egotism of that temperament.[24]It reminds one of Beethoven and the rice pudding, and of Henry VIII and his loving subjects. But, whereas Henry, being a law-abiding, even though impetuous, sovereign, was able to satisfy his obsessions by due process of law, Schopenhauer and Beethoven had to take the matter into their own forthright hands. And yet they say that the world did not improve in those 300 years.[25]Probably he was thinking of gonorrhœal ophthalmia, and dreading lest he catch it by the unconventional way of a bath. No doubt somebody had warned him against the dangers of the towel. He was full of quaint ideas about infection. He must have walked in a maze of ghosts due to his syphilophobia.[26]I hate to remind the world of the ancient slander—A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree,The more you thrash ’em the better they be.[27]Similarly Freud’s use of the term “sex” has been much misunderstood. It does not mean sensuality. In man it has been so sublimated as to come nearer to pity and love than to mere brute instinct.[28]So far as we know we invariably become unconscious before we die; it seems to be exactly like falling asleep.[29]Or rather perhaps the infinite forces of the universeas grasped by the mind of man.[30]Of course because religion and science have nothing whatever to do with each other. Religion is an emotion comparable to pity and love—that is, to sex. Science is the observation of phenomena, which religion sometimes unwisely tries to solve by transcendental explanations.

FOOTNOTES

[1]There are innumerable English synonyms for psychasthenic, mostly slang. A few are unbalanced, half-crazy, half-cracked, half-dotty, peculiar, queer, etc. But none of these expresses the exact meaning of the Greek; indeed, it is impossible absolutely to escape from medical jargon, except by a phrase.

[2]Probably it was the clinical type with stupor, in which grief and the sense of sin become so overwhelming that the patient can hardly move.

[3]According to Professor J. J. Welsh many ointments in use at the time contained mercury.

[4]In cases resembling nymphomania that occur after childbirth we call it puerperal insanity.

[5]The title was only recent. Formerly he had been called “His Grace.”

[6]See how neurotic he was at the time!

[7]Please note that “sex” doesnotmean “sensuality.”

[8]These postulates are:(a) Her supposed deformity must have been such as would allow her terrible father and her anxious mother to accept her as a daughter, although they both desperately longed for a son and heir.(b) It must have been such as would have been known to herself.(c) It could not have interfered with the ordinary physiological processes of her life.(d) It must have been such as would not interfere with her living in at least tolerable health to the age of sixty-nine.

[8]These postulates are:

(a) Her supposed deformity must have been such as would allow her terrible father and her anxious mother to accept her as a daughter, although they both desperately longed for a son and heir.(b) It must have been such as would have been known to herself.(c) It could not have interfered with the ordinary physiological processes of her life.(d) It must have been such as would not interfere with her living in at least tolerable health to the age of sixty-nine.

(a) Her supposed deformity must have been such as would allow her terrible father and her anxious mother to accept her as a daughter, although they both desperately longed for a son and heir.

(b) It must have been such as would have been known to herself.

(d) It must have been such as would not interfere with her living in at least tolerable health to the age of sixty-nine.

[9]If it is a science.

[10]Please do not look upon this as a diagnosis; all we say positively is that the spirochæte must have affected his mind.

[11]British Medical Journal, 1910.

[12]Some say sixteen.

[13]Much the same libels on Catherine’s physical condition were spread about her as had already been said about Elizabeth.

[14]Macaulay makes such fun of the poor doctors, with many sensational adjectives, but I shall not reprint it here.

[15]A Freudian would say that Frederick’s dirtiness simply represented an unconscious revolt against the tyranny of his father.

[16]Probably he was some crazy fellow of the minor clergy. The whole world seems to have gone mad at this time; it only shows us what the Crusades really meant to Europe.

[17]Plague and Pestilence in Art and Literature, by Raymond Crawfurd.

[18]Friedlander, taking his account of it entirely from Galen, considered it to have been “petechial typhus,” or smallpox. The sanitary condition of Rome must have been perfectly frightful, and to read Friedlander makes one shudder.

[19]Probably Mus Rattus, the black rat, at that time. Mus decumanus, the brown rat, does not seem to have begun to conquer the black rat till the eighteenth century.

[20]Epidemics of the Middle Ages.

[21]Of course this mainly refers to the poor. It is said that the serfs deforested Europe in order that their betters might have a weekly hot bath.

[22]The question of the first appearance of syphilis in Europe appears to have been settled by an article in theSt. Louis Urological and Cutaneous Reviewfor 1924.

[23]Probably, like so many leaders of thought, Nietzsche was of the manic-depressive temperament, with all the apparently insane egotism of that temperament.

[24]It reminds one of Beethoven and the rice pudding, and of Henry VIII and his loving subjects. But, whereas Henry, being a law-abiding, even though impetuous, sovereign, was able to satisfy his obsessions by due process of law, Schopenhauer and Beethoven had to take the matter into their own forthright hands. And yet they say that the world did not improve in those 300 years.

[25]Probably he was thinking of gonorrhœal ophthalmia, and dreading lest he catch it by the unconventional way of a bath. No doubt somebody had warned him against the dangers of the towel. He was full of quaint ideas about infection. He must have walked in a maze of ghosts due to his syphilophobia.

[26]I hate to remind the world of the ancient slander—A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree,The more you thrash ’em the better they be.

[26]I hate to remind the world of the ancient slander—

A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree,The more you thrash ’em the better they be.

A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree,

The more you thrash ’em the better they be.

[27]Similarly Freud’s use of the term “sex” has been much misunderstood. It does not mean sensuality. In man it has been so sublimated as to come nearer to pity and love than to mere brute instinct.

[28]So far as we know we invariably become unconscious before we die; it seems to be exactly like falling asleep.

[29]Or rather perhaps the infinite forces of the universeas grasped by the mind of man.

[30]Of course because religion and science have nothing whatever to do with each other. Religion is an emotion comparable to pity and love—that is, to sex. Science is the observation of phenomena, which religion sometimes unwisely tries to solve by transcendental explanations.

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