Successors of Thales.
It would be fruitless to relate how successors of Thales varied his theory of an ultimate "principle," by substituting air or fire for water. But it is worth while to note that another citizen of Miletus, Anaximander, after an interval of some forty years, pronounced that the beginning, the first principle, the origin of all things, was neither water, nor air, nor fire, but the Infinite ([Greek: to apeae on]). And though the best authorities confess that they cannot be sure of his meaning, this may very well be because he anticipated Herbert Spencer by two and a half millenniums, in acknowledging that all things merge in one and the same Unknowable. But, so far as our evidence goes, he made no such attempt as the modern philosopher did, to persuade the religious instinct that this Unknowable could supply the place of all the gods.
Xenophanes of Elea, about 570 to 480 B.C.
The position of Xenophanes, who, toward the latter part of the sixth century B.C. migrated, apparently for political reasons, in fear of Persian imperialism, from Colophon in Asia Minor to Elea in Italy, was a little different, and, for our purpose, more interesting. For the few fragments which are unfortunately all that is left to us of his philosophical poetry, are strongly suggestive of Pantheism, and the interpretation put upon them by later classical and sub-classical writers, who had his works before them, would appear decisive. True, the distinguished and enlightened scholar, Simon Karsten, who, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, found a labour of love in collecting and editing the remains of early Greek philosophers, deprecated such a judgment. Yet, while the motives for his special pleading were honourable, seeing the odious misrepresentations of Pantheism stillHis Pantheism Disputed but well Established.prevalent in the Dutch scholar's native land,—misrepresentations undissipated even by the splendour of Spinoza,—his protest remains special pleading still. And he himself candidly quotes at large from an alleged work of Aristotle—possibly, only a student's notes of the latter's lectures—and also from Simplicius, as reported by Theophrastus in a comment on Aristotle's Physics, sentences which describe the system of Xenophanos as unquestionably Pantheistic. From, which description IHis Religion.gather that the devout philosopher regarded God as the only real Being, including all that in human language has been, is, and will be, without beginning or end, living and perceiving equally everywhere throughout His infinite essence. And if that essence is compared by Xenophanes to a sphere, neither bounded nor boundless, neither moving nor immovable, this is only because few, if any, in that age of the world, could content themselves with loyally accepting the limits imposed on man by the very nature of things, limits which now compel us to own that, while the Eternal is more real than ourselves, yet, in the strict sense of knowing, He is, from an intellectual standpoint, the Unknowable.
Extent of his Sympathy with Popular Religion.
This Pantheism did not generate in Xenophanes any arrogant disdain for the religion of his time. For, though he condemned, in words often quoted, the folly which supposed the gods to have the human form, senses, passions and appetites, he was yet glad to worship the divine All as partially manifested in finite beings—perhaps personified powersA Pantheistic Communion Feast.of nature. Thus among the fragments of his poetry fortunately preserved, is one exquisite gem, a description of a festive repast in the open air. There purity comes first, symbolised by clear floor, clean hands, and spotless dishes. Upon purity waits beauty, not in the forms desired by sensuous passion, but in garlands of flowers and in delicate scents. The wine is unstinted, yet tempered with sparkling water. But, lest the plentifulness of bread and honey and cheese upon the lordly table should eclipse the highest sanctions of human joy, an altar prominent in the festive scene is heaped with offerings of flowers. Then the first note of music is the praise of God, a praise taking form in blameless poetic myths and holy thoughts. In such a feast the minds of the guests are kindled with a desire to be capable of doing right. "There is no harm in drinking with reasonable moderation[10]; and we may honour the guest who, warmed by wine, talks of such noble deeds and instances of virtue as his memory may suggest. But let him not tell of Titan battles, or those of the giants or centaurs, the fictions of bygone days, nor yet of factious quarrels, nor gossip, that can serve no good end. Rather let us ever keep a good conscience towards the gods."[11]
Having given so much space to an ancient who seems to me specially interesting as a prophet of the ultimate apotheosis of earthly religions, I must be content to indicate, in a very few lines, the course of the Pantheistic tradition among the Greeks after his day. The arithmetical mysticism of Pythagoras has no bearing upon our subject.Empedocles, Middle of Fifth Century B.C.Empedocles of Agrigentum, living about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and thus, perhaps, in the second generation after Xenophanes, was, in many respects, a much more imposing figure—clothed in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness, sympathy, and "magnetism." But he does not appear to have so nearly anticipated modern Pantheism as did his humbler predecessor. For though the fragments of Empedocles, much larger in volume than those of Xenophanes, certainly hint at some kind of everlasting oneness in things, and expressly tell us that there is no creation nor annihilation, but only perpetual changes of arrangement, yet they present other phases of thought, apparently irreconcileable with the doctrine that there is nothing other than God. Thus he teaches that there are four elements—earth, air, water and fire—out of which all things are generated. He also anticipates Lucretius in his pessimistic view of humanity's lot; and insists on the apparently independent existence of a principle of discord or strife in the Universe. It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him to have set forth precociously the Darwinian theory of the struggle for life. For his notion seems much more akin to the Zoroastrian imagination of Ahriman. Again, he sings melodiously, but most unphilosophically, of a former golden age, in which the lion and the lamb would seem to have lain down together in peace; and trees yielded fruit all the year round. At that time the only deity was Venus, who was worshipped with bloodless offerings alone. Still, it must be remembered that, whether consistently or not, Empedocles produced an elaborate work on the Nature of Things,Not Properly a Pantheist.to which Lucretius makes eloquent and earnest acknowledgments. But that very approval of Lucretius forbids us to regard the older poet as a Pantheist in our sense of the term. For certainly to him the Universe cannot have been a living God.
Genesis of Modern Religious Pantheism.
Between this philosophical idea of a Oneness, not thought of as God, and the spiritual contemplation of a universal Life of which all things are modes, the highest thoughts of men hovered during the process by which, in some measure under extraneous influences, Greek speculation finally produced Neo-platonism—or, as we might say in the current phraseology of our time—a restatement of Plato's teaching. Of this school, arising in the early Christian centuries, some leaders were undoubtedly Pantheists. But we cannot say this of Plato himself, nor of his master Socrates. For though these great men were more profoundly interested in the moral order of the world than in any questions of physical nature, or even of metaphysical subtleties, they were never given to the kind of contemplation suggested above in extracts from the Classical Books of the East, the contemplation which educes the moral ideal from unreserved subordination of self to the Universe as of the part to the Whole. Doubtless the inspiration imparted by Socrates to a disciple in mere intellect his superior, and the resulting moral and religious suggestions abounding in the Dialogues, did much to impel the current of religious evolution toward that spiritual aspect of the Infinite All which fascinated some of the Neo-Platonists, and received its most splendid exposition from Spinoza. But the conditions imposed by necessary brevity compel me to pass by those classic names with this acknowledgment, and to hasten toward the fuller revelation of Pantheism as a religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[2]Some scholars think they can trace Christian, influences in the exceptionally late Bhagavad Gîtâ, hereafter quoted. But it is a disputed point; and certainly in the case of the Vedas and pre-Christian literature arising out of them even Jewish influence was impossible.
[3]As imperious brevity excludes full explanation, I must content myself with a reference toThe Religion of the Universe, pp. 152-5. London: Macmillan & Co.
[4]According to the late Max Müller, with whom Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids agrees, the word Upanishad is equivalent to our word "sitting" or "session"; only that it is usually confined to a sitting of master and pupil.
[5]Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 92. The immediately following quotations are from the same Upanishad.
[6]"The gods of ocean, air and fire, and the judge of the lower regions respectively" (Rev. John Davies).
[7]The "Bhagavad Gîtâ," translated by the Rev. J. Davies, M.A.
[8]The Karma wasnota soul. What it was is, according to our authorities, very difficult for the Western mind to conceive. But its practical effect was, that on the death of the imperfect man, another finite existence of some sort necessarily took his place. But this new finite existence was not the former man. It is only on the death of him who has attained Nirvana that Karma ceases to act, and no new finite existence takes his place.
[9]See Prof. W. Max Muller, on "Egypt," in theEncyc. Biblica.
[10]"Capability of walking home without help," is the limit quaintly fixed by the poet. To our modern feeling it seems rather wide. Yet, practically, it is the limit professedly observed by our publicans in serving their customers.
[11]Karsten,Xenophanis Reliquiae, p. 68 (Amsterdam, 1830). Both the paraphrase and occasional translations which I give are of course free; but I think the spirit and meaning are preserved.
POST-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM.
POST-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM.
In speaking of Neo-Platonism I incidentally mentioned its apparent subjection to "extraneous influences," These, of course, included the rising power of Christianity and its Jewish traditions.
The Hebrew Tradition.
Even before the advent of the new revelation, the Jewish settlements existing in all great cities of the Graeco-Roman world excited interest at any rate among sentimentalists touched by the fascination at that time beginning to be exerted by oriental religions. And this influence of Jewish traditions was much facilitated by the existence of a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.
Now, what the Hebrew tradition did for Greek philosophy was, of course,Its Influence on Greek Philosophy.not to favour its Pantheistic trend, where that existed, but much more to convert such semi-Pantheism from a mere intellectual speculation to contemplative devotion. For Hebraism itself had become almost asTo Inspire Devotion, Not Solve Problems.intensely monotheistic as the later Islam. And, though monotheism may be a stage in the progress of religion from Animism to Pantheism, it may, also, by the peculiar intensity of the personal devotion it sometimes inspires, cause the very idea of any farther expansion of faith to be counted a sin.
Perhaps the influence of Hebraism on Hellenism may be illustrated by thePhilo, the Jew of Alexandria.Alexandrian Philo's pathetic endeavour not only to trace the wisdom of the Greeks to Moses, but to show that this derived lore is much mightier for good when re-invested with the spiritual power and ardent devotion of the Jewish faith.
"If any one will speak plainly," he writes,[12]"he might say that the intelligible world is nothing other than the word (se. [Greek: logos], reason) of the world-making God. For neither is the intelligible city anything other than the thought [Greek: logismos] of the architect already intending to build the city. This is the teaching of Moses, not mine. At any rate in what follows, when he records the origin of man, he declares outright that man was made in the image of God. But if a part (of creation) reflects the type, so also must the entire manifestation, this intelligible ordered world, which is a reproduction of the divine image on a larger scale than that of man."[13]
How Philo managed to extort this out of the Pentateuch is a question of interest, but one on which I cannot delay. Suffice it, that while heMotives Underlying his Distortion of Hebraism.thus showed his reverence for the traditions of his race, his whole aim is to fire philosophy with religious devotion. But he was not, in any strict sense of the word, a Pantheist, though he regarded the Logos as an emanation from the Eternal, and the kosmos, the ordered world, as in some way emanating from the Logos. Perhaps, indeed, if we could excludeNot Pantheistic.from emanation the idea of time, as Christians are supposed to do when they speak of the "eternal generation" of the Divine Son or the "procession" of the Holy Ghost, we might regard Philo, with the succeeding Neo-Platonists and some of the Gnostics, as approximately Pantheistic. But his vagueness and uncertainty about matter forbid such a conclusion. For whether he regarded matter as eternally existing apart from the divine substance, or whether he looked upon it as the opposite of Being, as a sort of positive nothing, in either case, it cannot be said that for him the whole Universe was God, and nothing but God.
If I have given more space to the great Alexandrian Jew than my narrow limits ought to afford, it is because I think I may thus avoid theNeo-Platonism.necessity of saying much about the philosophic schemes of the Neo-Platonists, the phantasies of the Gnostics, or the occasionally daring speculations of the Christian Fathers. For whether the works of Philo were much studied by the Greeks or not, they certainly describedResultant of Contact between East and West.the spiritual resultant—so to speak—emerging from the mutual impact of Western and Oriental, especially Jewish, ideas. Which resultant was "in the air" from the first century of the Christian age; and the later epistles ascribed to St. Paul, as well as the Fourth Gospel, show clear traces of it.[14]
But the inspiration of the time-spirit was not confined to the Christian Church. For the city of Alexandria, where that spirit seems to have been peculiarly potent as shown in the transfigured Judaism of Philo, was theIts Religious Inspiration.birthplace of the Neo-Platonic school already mentioned above. And among its greatest members, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, the religious influence of the East was distinctly apparent. True, they followed Socrates and Plato in reverence for knowledge as the unfailing begetter of virtue. But their speculations about the divine Being were touched by Oriental emotion. And we may with some confidence believe that their development of the Platonic Trinity owed a good deal to the rapid spread of Christianity. Thus the sentiment, the fervour, the yearning for "salvation," the worship and devotion taught by the best of the Neo-Platonists were not so much, from Athens as from Sinai and Galilee. Yet, though there were in their world-conception many anticipations ofSuggestive of Pantheism, but not such in Spinoza's Sense.the gospel of the "God-intoxicated man," whom the counsels of the Eternal reserved for the fulness of times, it would scarcely be accurate to describe the system of any of them as strictly Pantheistic. For they were always troubled about "matter" as an anomalous thing in a divine universe, and in treating of it they hesitated between the notion of an eternal nuisance which the Demiurgus, or acting God, could only modify, not destroy, and, on the other hand, a strained theory of an evil nothing, which is yet something. Again, so far from realising Spinoza's faith in God as so literally All in All that there is nothing else but He, they would not tolerate the contact of the Infinite with the finite, of God with the world. Consistently with such prepossessions, they held obstinately to the notion of some beginning, and therefore some ending of the ordered world. And this beginning was effected by emanations such as the Logos, or, as others had it, the world-soul and other divine energies, between the Eternal and creation; a phantasy which, however poetically wrought out, is not really consistent with Pantheism.
Such ideas of a hierarchy of subordinate emanations to fill the supposed abyss between the Infinite and the Finite were eagerly adopted andThe Gnostics.developed by the pseudo-philosophers called Gnostics, on both sides of the boundary between the Church and the World. Suffice it that, like most, though by no means all of their predecessors, they regarded the world of earth, sun, planet, stars, and animated nature with man at its head, as the whole Universe; and, assuming that it must have had a beginning, they vexed their souls with futile attempts to frame some gradual transition from the uncreated to the created, from the eternal to the mortal. The grotesque chimaeras engendered thus are remembered now only as illustrations of the facile transition from the sublime to the ridiculous and from philosophy to folly.
The Church Fathers.
The orthodox Christian fathers were not less conscious than the Neo-Platonists or Gnostics of the perennial problem of the Many and the One. But they were restrained, perhaps, by the "faith that comes of self-control," perhaps by mere common sense, from indulging in attempts to connect the Infinite with the Finite by "vain genealogies." Indeed, for the most part they confessed that whatever light the Gospel might shed on moral issues, it left untouched the ultimate question of the relation of the Infinite to the Finite. And the only aspect of their most venturesome speculations which I need recall is their insistence, even when apparently verging toward Pantheism, on a transcendent as well as an immanent God, that is on a Creator existing, so to speak, outside the Universe and apart from it as well as permeating every part. Thus,Augustine.for example, Augustine would seem to deny to the world any separate creature existence when he says, that but for the divinity everywhere in it, creation would cease to be. But in his insistence on the creation of the world from nothing, he directly contradicts Pantheism, because he must necessarily be taken to mean that there is now something other than God.
That there have been devout Christians whose mystic speculations on the relations of the soul to the Eternal logically involved Pantheism—if logic in such a case had any function—there can be no doubt. But for most of them "God's word written" seemed to confirm God's word in heaven and earth as known to them, proclaiming that there had been a beginning and there must be an end. Therefore, whatever might be the immanence of the Creator in His works, God could not, in their minds, be identified with "the fashion of this world" which "passeth away."
Yet the time was coming when the Divine word both in Scripture and in Nature was to be otherwise read. For men began to learn that the Bible was other than they had supposed and the Universe immeasurably greater than they had conceived.
FOOTNOTES:
[12]De Mundi Opificio, p. 5B. I take him to mean by [Greek: kosmos noêtos]—the world as apperceived—realised in our consciousness.
[13]It should be noted that Philo, who was contemporary with Jesus, often uses the title "the Father" [Greek: ho Pataer] as a sufficient designation of the Eternal. It was not very usual, and is suggestive of certain spiritual sympathies amidst enormous intellectual divergencies between the Alexandrian philosopher and the Galilean prophet.
[14]See Col. i. 15-17 and refs. John i. 1-3; iii. 13; viii. 58.
MODERN PANTHEISM.
MODERN PANTHEISM.
Spinoza.
Modern Pantheism as a religion begins with Spinoza. Whether it ended with him is a question which the future will have to decide. But the signs of the times are, at least in my view, very clearly against such a conclusion. And amongst the omens which portend immortality, not necessarily for the philosophical scheme, but for the "God-intoxicated" devoutness of his Pantheism, is the desire, or rather the imperious need increasingly realized, for a religion emancipated from theories ofA Pantheistic Prophet.creation or teleology, intolerant of any miracle, save indeed the wonders of the spiritual life, and satisfying the heart with an ever present God. For it is to be remembered that Spinoza was the first Pantheist who was also a prophet, in the sense of speaking out the divine voice of the infinite Universe to its human constituent parts. Not that I would minimize the religious fervour of the Neo-Platonists: it is their Pantheism that seems to have been imperfect. But in Spinoza we have a man who, inheriting by birth the tradition—I might even say the apostolic succession—of the Jewish prophets, and gifted with an insight into the consummation of that tradition in Jesus Christ, wasThe Main Subject here is his Religion and not his Philosophy.driven by a commanding intellect to divorce the spiritual life he prized from creeds that had become to him Impossible, and to enshrine it in the worthier temple of an eternal Universe identical with God. It is not, then, with his philosophy that I am so much concerned as with his religion.[15]
It is given to no man to be absolutely original in the sense of creatingHis Originality.ideas of which no germs existed before his day. But short of such an impossible independence of the past, Benedict de Spinoza had perhaps as much originality as any man who ever lived. Yet with a modesty ever characteristic of moral greatness, he himself was disposed, at any rate during his earlier philosophical development, to exaggerate hisRelation to Descartes.indebtedness to the philosopher Descartes, whose system he laboriously abridged in the inappropriate form of a series of propositions supposed to be demonstrated after the fashion of Euclid.
Fundamental Differences.
But whatever may have been the esoteric belief of Descartes about creation out of nothing and the theological dogmas connected therewith, he attached too much importance to the social and political functions of established ecclesiastical institutions to declare himself independent of them. And though his submission, signalised on his death-bed, did not interfere with the freest working of his brilliant intellect within limits permitted to the former ecclesiastical "schoolmen," it did prevent his frank realization of the eternal oneness of all being. For it compelled him to retain belief in a Creator distinct in essence fromSpinoza Discards Creator and Creation,Creation. Such a belief Spinoza entirely rejected. For though his "Natura Naturans," or Nature Active, may in a manner be called the Creator of his "Natura Naturata," or Nature Passive, these are consubstantial and co-eternal, neither being before or after the other.Beginning and End.Thus for him there was no beginning of the Universe and there could be no end. There was no creation out of nothing, nor any omen of weariness, decay, or death in the eternal order. He teaches us in effect to take the Universe as it is, and to pry into no supposed secrets of origin or end, an entirely gratuitous labour, imposed by illusions arising out ofTakes the Universe as it Is.the continuous redistribution of parts of the Whole. Instead of thus spending our mental energy for nought, he would have us regard the whole of Being as one Substance characterized by innumerable attributes, of which Extension and Thought alone come within our human cognizance; while each Attribute is subject to infinite Modes or modifications, which, in their effect on the two attributes known to us—extension and thought—constitute the universe of our experience. That infinite andAnd Worships the Static Whole as God.eternal Substance revealed by Attributes and their Modes is God, absolute in His perfections if He could be fully conceived and known in all His activities. And even to our ignorance He is entrancing in His gradual self-revelation, as with our inadequate ideas we pursue the unattainable from glory to glory.
This View of the Universe applied to Psalm civ.
This, then, is the first note we make of the gospel of Spinoza. But if any one thinks that the sacred word "gospel" is here misused, and that such teaching is fatal to piety, let him turn to the 104th Psalm and read, from Spinoza's point of view, the cosmic vision of the Hebrew seer. True, we can think no longer of the supernatural carpenter who works on "the beams of his chambers" above, or of the mythical engineer who digs deep in the darkness to "lay the foundations of the earth." For that is poetry, appealing by concrete images to the emotions. But it does not bind the intellect to a literal interpretation; and we are no longer tormented by vain efforts to reconcile with infinite impossibilities the half-human personality presented in poetic guise. So that the vision of the seer is now the suggestion to us of an infinite and eternal Being, whose attributes by modification take the innumerable shapes of sun, moon, and stars, and mountains and river, and tree and flower, and bird and beast, and man. And the winds that sweep and the floods that roll, and the rocky barriers that stand fast, and the rivers that wind among the hills, and the trees that flourish and the living societies that gather in fruitful places, the labourer in his vineyard, the sailor in his ship, all are in and of the one Eternal Being. Yet we echo not with less, but perhaps with more reverence, than the believers in a divine artisan, the words of the Psalmist: "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches." But if the thunder and the flaming fire and the sweeping flood seem discordant, they existed for the Psalmist as well as for us, and they do not seem to have troubled him. At this point, therefore, we need only say that Spinoza's religion of one divine Substance, whose unity in variety is holy, ought to stir within us with not less fervour, at least the spirit of the Psalmist's concluding prayer: "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be no more."
Spinoza no Materialist,
Spinoza's maintenance of extension as one of the two infinite divine attributes cognizable by us has, with a certain amount of plausibility, been urged as a note of materialism. And this reproach has been supported by reference to his insistence that in man the body and the soul are only two different aspects of the same thing; for to him theNotwithstanding his Attribution of "Extension" to God.body is a finite Mode of God's infinite attribute of extension and the soul a finite Mode of God's infinite attribute of thought, while both are manifestations of the one eternal divine Substance. Still, if in any way we are to regard God as extended, it seems impossible to avoid the inference that we regard Him as identified with matter, or at least theCriticism by Sir F. Pollock.possibility of matter. Sir Frederick Pollock has admitted that this is a weak point in Spinoza's philosophy,[16]and mars its symmetry. But, being more concerned with, his religion, I am content to point out that such an objection was much more effective in Spinoza's time than it isChanges In Theories of Matter since Spinoza's time.to-day. For the whole trend of philosophy during the nineteenth century was towards a view of Extension itself as a mode of Thought, and therefore toward the absorption of one of Spinoza's theoretical divine attributes in the other.
Their Effect on his System.
Now if this should prove to be the permanent tendency of the most influential thinkers—as indeed seems most likely—it will probably be held that Spinoza was wrong in attributing extension to the Eternal as one of the qualities of His substance, except in so far as extension is, if not a necessary, at any rate an actual, and so far as we know, a universal mode of thought. But though, as Sir Frederick Pollock has pointed out, Spinoza has in a manner "counted thought twice over" while treating of the only two infinite attributes cognizable to us, we need not, on that account, surrender his luminous idea of God as a Being absolutely infinite, that is, "Substance consisting of infinite Attributes, whereof each one expresses eternal and infinite being." Nor need we abandon his supplementary but essential idea of "Modes" or "modifications" which mould the attributes into the varieties of finite worlds, known and unknown. Thus it may be that, in Spinoza's sense of the word "Attribute," we shall have to confess that only one comes within our human ken, that of Thought in a sense which includes feeling. But if the late Herbert Spencer, apart from his synthetic philosophy of phenomena, has left any permanent mark on the religions consciousness, it has been by a consecration of the mystery of the ultimate Unknowable.[17]And in the spirit of reverence thus taught by him we may still hold with Spinoza that the Eternal has an infinity of other attributes with their infinite modifications not within our cognizance. This would only be an enlarged application of Hamlet's words:
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Or, to put it in another way, the Universe perceptible to us is only one of an infinity of Universes. By which is not meant an infinite extension of galaxies in space, but the co-existence and, so to speak, interpenetration of an infinity of modes of existence imperceptible to us.
God Is Identical with the Whole of Being.
To Spinoza, then, God is the totality of Being. But it is not to be inferred that he identified God with the visible, or with any conceivable Universe. For either of these must fall far short of infinity, and the Being of God is infinite. All I mean, when I say that Spinoza identifies God with the totality of existence, is that he regards the deity as that Perfect Being without beginning or end, whose essence it is to be, and of whom all that exists, whether known to us or not, is separately a partial, and comprehensively a perfect expression.
His Doctrine of Man.
Of more practical interest to us perhaps is Spinoza's doctrine of man, though it would have been impossible to explain that without first indicating his idea of God. In his view, then, man is a finite mode of the two divine attributes, extension and thought. Thus both the extended body and the conscious mind have their substance and reality in God.[18]But the essence of man does not necessarily involve his separate existence as the essence of God implies Being. Of course the substance of man is imperishable because it is of God's substance. Nay, there is a sense in which each man, being an eternal thought of God, has an aspect towards eternity or exists "sub specie eternitatis." But that is a truth transcending the finite practical world with which we have to do.
According to Spinoza, what constitutes the real essence of the human mind is the (divine) idea of a certain individual creature actually existing.[19]Here, perhaps, modern speculations about the constitution of matter may help us—if we use them with due reserve—to grasp Spinoza's notion of a "res singularis in actu"—or as it might be rendered freely, "a creature of individual functions," for what isIllustration by the Vortex Theory.called the "vortex theory," though as old as Cartesian philosophy, has recently flashed into sudden prominence. And whether or no the speculation be only a passing phase of human thought about the Unknowable, it equally answers the purpose of illustration. Thus the so-called "ether" is supposed to fill all space; and within it there are imagined or inferred innumerable "tourbillons" or "vortices," which, though parts of the indefinitely extended ether, form by their self-contained motion little worlds in themselves. These little worlds are by some regarded as the atoms which, by composition, and differentiation, build up our palpable universe. With the possibilities of such a theory I have nothing to do. But the notion of the vortex in the ether may perhaps help us to a glimpse of Spinoza's notion when he speaks of a "res singularis in actu" a creature of individual functions. For to him man was, as it were, an infinitesimal vortex in a phase or attribute of the divine Substance. The analogy, like all other analogies, would not bear being pressed. But it does suggest to us a picture of finite individuality in action or function, subordinated toDistinction between Man and Beast.unity with infinite Substance. If it be said that such an explanation would necessarily include the conscious life of beasts and birds, the answer would seem to be, that admitting this to be the case, yet in man the divine idea of individuality is more fully expressed and has more of reality than in any lower creature.
Moral Difficulties.
Man, then, according to Spinoza, is in God and of God. But what are we to say of bad men, the vile, the base, the liar, the murderer? Are they also in God and of God? Spinoza does not blench. Yes, they are. But here comes in his doctrine of "adequate" and "inadequate ideas." Thus, if you see the colour red it completely expresses itself. It cannot be defined and needs no explanation.[20]As it is in the Infinite Thought so it is in ours. We have an "adequate idea" of it. But now if you see on an artist's canvas a splotch of red and blue and yellow, part of a work only begun, it gives you no adequate idea. True, you have an adequate idea of each several colour, but not of their relations to the work conceived. To get that you would have to enter into the mind of the artist and see as he sees. Then the splotch of colour would take its place as part of a harmonious whole; and would give you an adequate idea just as it does to the artist.
But the Universe Is Not an Unfinished Picture.
Now, according to Spinoza, when we see things as they appear in Infinite Thought we have an adequate idea. But if we see only a component element in an idea—let us say—of the divine Artist, then our idea is inadequate.[21]Hence we misjudge things. And of the part played by bad men in the divine Whole we certainly have no adequate idea. But here again we must be on our guard against the abuse of illustrations. For it is not to be inferred that Spinoza regards the Universe as an unfinished picture, of which, the completion will justify the beginning. On the contrary, the Universe is to him eternal, the necessary expression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being. Still the analogy may help us. For the concentration of attention on a single part of an ordered whole may, quite as certainly as a glance at an unfinished work, be the occasion of an inadequate idea. In effect, the suggestion is that if we, like God, could contemplate the infinite Universe all at once, and haveIt is an Eternal Whole, of which a Partial consideration is Misleading.an adequate idea thereof, in other words if we could ascend to the self contemplation of the Eternal, we should have the bliss associated by long habit with the words of the Psalmist: "I shall be satisfied when I awake, with thy likeness." Such bliss, however, is only approximately attainable in moments of mystic transport. And when, as in so many experiences, we see only in part, and have inadequate ideas, faith in the Eternal Whole is needed to keep us from blasphemy.
Doctrine of Man Resumed.
With such necessarily brief hints as to Spinoza's attitude towards evil, I resume his doctrine of man—the individual creature as a centre of action. Of final causes Spinoza will not hear. But if instead of asking "what is the chief end of man," we ask what is the idea of man, Spinoza answers that it is the realization of a mode of the divine attributes,Final Cause Replaced by Idea.extension and thought. And if this should seem unsatisfying, let it be remembered that to this devout Pantheist the divine attributes and their modes were the expression of the very substance and life of God. Now with "extension," for reasons already given, we need not trouble ourselves except to say that at least Spinoza's teaching would suggest the idea ofmens sana in corpore sano. Because to him the mind was the "idea" of the body, and the body the "object"—not quite in the modern sense—of the mind. But as regards the human mode of the divineFreedom, Purity, Love.attribute of thought, Spinoza makes its ideal to be a life absorbed in such contemplation of "the Blessed God," the infinite Whole, as shall react on the creature in inspirations of freedom, purity and love.
Idea of Freedom.
And first as to freedom, Spinoza means by this not caprice, nor the monstrous miracle of causeless action, but independence of external force or of any disproportionate and illegitimate passion. The freedom to which he aspires is the freedom of God, who eternally acts in accordance with the mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His nature, not one of which clashes with another. So Spinoza's free man is one in whom all aspirations and energies, converging in one resultant, the expression of the divine idea, move him in harmony with the Universe. From such a point of view the quibbles about "free will," in the sense of causeless action, cease to have any meaning. For if the good man says "I could have done otherwise if I had liked," the obvious reply is, "Yes, but you would not have liked." Because the will is not a separate faculty, but the expression of the whole nature, as that exists at the moment of "willing." And the only real freedom is the unimpeded conglomerate impulse to do right. But should it be asked what if the resultant impulse of the whole nature is toward wrong? the answer is, in that case there is no freedom, but a slavery to some external influence or to a disturbed balance of the passions. Or if it be asked what is right? that is a far reaching question to the solution of which Spinoza bends all his splendid powers. But limits of space preclude me from saying more than, that his ideal of right will be found conformable to the highest standards of the most spiritual religions.
Purity.
This ideal I ventured to symbolize rather than define as "purity." For after all the philosophic reasoning with which it is no less lucidly than laboriously worked out in the final book of hisEthica, "Concerning Human. Freedom"—the moral result of all this intellectual effort is that same cleansing of the soul from vain desire and that subordination of the earthly self to its divine idea which we are taught in the Sermon on the Mount. And while surely every one but a fanatical anti-Christian must allow the greater prophetic worth of the Galilean, who could teach these sublime lessons so that "the common people heard him gladly," it seems difficult to deny to the heretic Jew of the Hague the second rank among the teachers given to the world by that strangely gifted race. For though he could not speak to "the common people," he left as his legacy to mankind, not so much a system of philosophy, as an impregnable foundation for morals and religion, available for the time now coming upon us—such a time as that suggested by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he spoke of "the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." No doubt Sir Frederic Pollock is quite right in declaring that Spinoza would have been the very last man to desire any one to become a Spinozist. But that is quite consistent with the inspired Pantheist's infinite longing to see all men blessed by that inward peace which he proved, by his own heroic experience, to be identical with the self-control conferred and maintained by devout contemplation of God's all-comprehensive Being and our place therein. If, then, I regard purity as the best symbol of such a moral ideal, it is because the word connotes, together with freedom from discordant passion, a frankly unconstrained recognition of the simplicity of our relation to God. For surely when once the self has made the great surrender, and becomes content to be nothing, that in St. Paul's words, "God may be all in all," the whole problem of life is infinitely simplified, in the sense that no farther degree of simplification is possible. Because all contradictions of pain and evil and sorrow are dissolved in that act of surrender. We must, indeed, recognize that to our "inadequate ideas" the time often seems "out of joint." But we need not, with Hamlet, cry out on an impossible "spite." For when once it is heartily and loyally realized that not our partial likings, but the eternal harmony of the Whole, is the glory of God, we already anticipate the peace of absorption in the Infinite.