with him at death, and became the editor of his posthumous works,
it can hardly be doubted that his treatise, which preceded Spinoza's
Tractatus by four years, influenced the great Jew, who speedily
eclipsed him. [624] Spinoza, however (1632-1677), was first led
to rationalize by his Amsterdam friend and teacher, Van den Ende,
a scientific materialist, hostile to all religion; [625] and it
was while under his influence that he was excommunicated by his
father's synagogue. From the first, apparently, Spinoza's thought
was shaped partly by the medieval Hebrew philosophy [626] (which, as
we have seen, combined Aristotelean and Saracen influences), partly
by the teaching of Bruno, though he modified and corrected that at
various points. [627] Later he was deeply influenced by Descartes,
whom he specially expounded for a pupil in a tractate. [628] Here
he endorses Descartes's doctrine of freewill, which he was later
to repudiate and overthrow. But he drew from Descartes his retained
principle that evil is not a real existence. In a much less degree he
was influenced by Bacon, whose psychology he ultimately condemned;
but from Hobbes he took not only his rationalistic attitude towards
"revelation," but his doctrine of ecclesiastical subordination. [629]
Finally evolving his own conceptions, he produced a philosophic system
which was destined to affect all European thought, remaining the while
quietly occupied with the handicraft of lens-grinding by which he
earned his livelihood. The Grand Pensionary of the Netherlands, John
de Witt, seems to have been in full sympathy with the young heretic,
on whom he conferred a small pension before he had published anything
save his Cartesian Principia (1663).
The much more daring and powerful Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
(1670 [630]) was promptly condemned by a Dutch clerical synod, along
with Hobbes's Leviathan, which it greatly surpassed in the matter of
criticism of the scriptural text. It was the most stringent censure
of supernaturalism that had thus far appeared in any modern language;
and its preface is an even more mordant attack on popular religion and
clericalism than the main body of the work. What seems to-day an odd
compromise--the reservation of supra-rational authority for revelation,
alongside of unqualified claims for the freedom of reason [631]--was
but an adaptation of the old scholastic formula of "twofold truth,"
and was perhaps at the time the possible maximum of open rationalism
in regard to the current creed, since both Bacon and Locke, as we have
seen, were fain to resort to it. As revealed in his letters, Spinoza
in almost all things stood at the point of view of the cultivated
rationalism of two centuries later. He believed in a historical Jesus,
rejecting the Resurrection; [632] disbelieved in ghosts and spirits;
[633] rejected miracles; [634] and refused to think of God as ever
angry; [635] avowing that he could not understand the Scriptures, and
had been able to learn nothing from them as to God's attributes. [636]
The Tractatus could not go so far; but it went far enough to horrify
many who counted themselves latitudinarian. It was only in Holland
that so aggressive a criticism of Christian faith and practice could
then appear; and even there neither publisher nor author dared avow
himself. Spinoza even vetoed a translation into Dutch, foreseeing
that such a book would be placed under an interdict. [637] It was
as much an appeal for freedom of thought (libertas philosophandi)
as a demonstration of rational truth; and Spinoza dexterously pointed
(c. 20) to the social effects of the religious liberty already enjoyed
in Amsterdam as a reason for carrying liberty further. There can
be no question that it powerfully furthered alike the deistic and
the Unitarian movements in England from the year of its appearance;
and, though the States-General felt bound formally to prohibit it on
the issue of the second edition in 1674, its effect in Holland was
probably as great as elsewhere: at least there seems to have gone on
there from this time a rapid modification of the old orthodoxy.
Still more profound, probably, was the effect of the posthumous Ethica
(1677), which he had been prevented from publishing in his lifetime,
[638] and which not only propounded in parts an absolute pantheism (=
atheism [639]), but definitely grounded ethics in human nature. If
more were needed to arouse theological rage, it was to be found
in the repeated and insistent criticism of the moral and mental
perversity of the defenders of the faith [640]--a position not
indeed quite consistent with the primary teaching of the treatise on
the subject of Will, of which it denies the entity in the ordinary
sense. Spinoza was here reverting to the practical attitude of Bacon,
which, under a partial misconception, he had repudiated; and he did
not formally solve the contradiction. His purpose was to confute the
ordinary orthodox dogma that unbelief is wilful sin; and to retort
the charge without reconciling it with the thesis was to impair
the philosophic argument. [641] It was not on that score, however,
that it was resented, but as an unpardonable attack on orthodoxy,
not to be atoned for by any words about the spirit of Christ. [642]
The discussion went deep and far. A reply to the Tractatus which
appeared in 1674, by an Utrecht professor (then dead), is spoken of
by Spinoza with contempt; [643] but abler discussion followed, though
the assailants mostly fell foul of each other. Franz Cuper or Kuyper
of Amsterdam, who in 1676 published an Arcana Atheismi Revelata,
professedly refuting Spinoza's Tractatus, was charged with writing
in bad faith and with being on Spinoza's side--an accusation which
he promptly retorted on other critics, apparently with justice. [644]
The able treatise of Prof. E. E. Powell on Spinoza and Religion
is open to demur at one point--its reiterated dictum that
Spinoza's character was marred by "lack of moral courage"
(p. 44). This expression is later in a measure retreated from:
after "his habitual attitude of timid caution," we have: "Spinoza's
timidity, or, if you will, his peaceable disposition." If the
last-cited concession is to stand, the other phrases should be
withdrawn. Moral courage, like every other human attribute,
is to be estimated comparatively; and the test-question here
is: Did any other writer in Spinoza's day venture further than
he? Moral courage is not identical with the fanaticism which
invites destruction; fanaticism supplies a motive which dispenses
with courage, though it operates as courage might. But refusal to
challenge destruction gratuitously does not imply lack of courage,
though of course it may be thereby motived. A quite brave man,
it has been noted, will quietly shun a gratuitous risk where
one who is "afraid of being afraid" may face it. When all is
said, Spinoza was one of the most daring writers of his day;
and his ethic made it no more a dereliction of duty for him to
avoid provoking arrest and capital punishment than it is for
either a Protestant or a rationalist to refrain from courting
death by openly defying Catholic beliefs before a Catholic
mob in Spain. It is easy for any of us to-day to be far more
explicit than Spinoza was. It is doubtful whether any of us,
if we had lived in his day and were capable of going as far in
heresy, would have run such risks as he did in publishing the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For those who have lived much in
his society, it should be difficult to doubt that, if allowed, he
would have dared death on the night of the mob-murder of the De
Witts. The formerly suppressed proof of his very plain speaking
on the subject of prayer, and his indications of aversion to
the practice of grace before meals (Powell, pp. 323-25) show
lack even of prudence on his part. Prof. Powell is certainly
entitled to censure those recent writers who have wilfully kept
up a mystification as to Spinoza's religiosity; but their lack
of courage or candour does not justify an imputation of the same
kind upon him. That Spinoza was "no saint" (Powell, p. 43) is
true in the remote sense that he was not incapable of anger. But
it would be hard to find a Christian who would compare with him
in general nobility of character. The proposition that he was not
"in any sense religious" (id. ib.) seems open to verbal challenge.