stance is immanent in thought as well as in extension. Both thought and extension are aspects of God. God is not matter; He is not spirit. He is the reality of both. Nevertheless, this reality is an abstraction which is the unity of no content, for it contains no finite thing. Spinoza's Doctrine of Salvation. Spinoza divided his Ethics into five parts. The first is a treatment of the nature of God; the second, of the nature and origin of the mind; the third, of the emotions; the fourth, of human bondage; the fifth, of human freedom. This most important writing of Spinoza, the only treatise on metaphysics which has been called Ethics, shows Spinoza as looking at life from two points of view: with reference to the nature of man; and with reference to the nature of God. We have discussed the first point. The nature of the human being in his relations to God is the other pole of Spinoza's philosophy; and this second topic involves primarily the problem of human freedom. The magnitude of Spinoza's doctrine of salvation appears before us when we remember that it rises out of his absolute necessitarianism. His theory of necessity is so thorough that he leaves no loophole for free-will in the ordinarily accepted meaning of the term. In contrast to Descartes this great thinker impresses us as absolutely sincere to his own thought. He is not content merely to picture the world of nature as the eternal mathematical consequent of the divine nature cessitated by the substance, as the three sides of the triangle are necessitated by the nature of the triangle itself. He goes further, so that there may be no equivocation. The particular things in nature are also necessitated by one another. The modes are under the law of two kinds of cause: the infinite or eternal, the finite - as ne or temporal. Finite or temporal causality is a rigid law that holds between the modes of each attribute. Within the attribute the modes form a chain of strict determination without beginning or end. Ideas—the modes of thought- are caused by other ideas; movements, the modes of extension · are caused by other movements. Since the attributes are entirely independent in psycho-physical parallelism (see p. 377)—no relation whatever exists between thoughts and bodily movements. This is the Spinozistic necessitarianism, and it is not, after all, very different from the general assumptions of the natural scientist of the nineteenth century. We ask contemporary science, How can you have moral freedom in your theory of life? This question Spinoza attempts to answer. In the last analysis ethics is to Spinoza only psychology, and religion is only intellectual study. The soul is a congeries of ideas (“idea of body "). Ideas are of three kinds: imaginations (or sense-perceptions), reasonings, and intuitions; and these have their accompanying affective modifications—the will and the active and passive emotions.1 Spinoza is impressed by the fact that consciousness bulks large with sense-perceptions and their accom 1. Cognitive processes (a) Imagination Soul (aggregation of ideas causally determined) 66 2. Non-cognitive processes (a) Passive emotions (sense-perception) accompanied by (b) Reasoning (c) Intuition Intellectual analysis reveals no abatement in the law of absolute necessity; but it discovers a real difference in the values of the ideas. Sense-perception makes us slaves; reason and intuition make us free. The emotions and will are only expressions or functions or modifications of the ideas. This is pure intellectualism and is not different in principle from the general philosophy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. panying passive emotions. Most people are in slavery to the unclear ideas of the senses and their emotions, both of which are in turn dependent on external objects. The ideas of the reason and the intuition are in comparison to those of sense-perception few; yet they are all-important. They are clear and distinct; they have substantiality like the substance they conceive; they have a truth which is independent. They are accompanied not by the emotions, but by the will. The will is their function, and only through them can man be free. Reason is the lower stage and intuition the higher stage in the program of salvation. Reason gives the rationalistic method and intuition the mystic goal for salvation. Based on reason Spinoza develops a practical ethics; based on intuition he develops a mysticism. The former is intellectualism; the latter is asceticism. We strike here the nerve of the deep inner contradiction in his teaching; for by means of the reason we can overcome the modes of imagination, sensation and emotion; by means of intuition we can avoid them. Let us conclude our exposition of Spinoza's philosophy by a brief discussion of these two forms of his ethics. Spinoza's Practical Ethics. At the first blush it is difficult to see how Spinoza could find any criterion in actual finite life to reconcile him to the living of it. There is nothing in the finite world which is good in itself. We do not, therefore, desire a thing because it is itself good, but it is good because we desire it and bad because we avoid it. What is the use of attempting to live a moral life when we know it to be illusory? The answer is contained in Spinoza's definition of virtue. Knowledge of the character of the finite world as finite is itself virtue because it gives us power. Virtue is power through knowledge. Here is the Baconian motif playing the rôle in the Spinozistic philosophy that the same motif played in ancient times in the Socratic philosophy. Virtue has for Spinoza the ancient meaning of virtus or excellence, the ability of self-preservation and self-development. The instinct of selfpreservation is to Spinoza the only one from a physiological point upon which a practical ethics can be grounded. "Thou must increase thy power." The clearer our reason conceives the geometrical scheme of nature, the more distinct appears the unreality of the modes and the reality of the substance- the greater the joyous consciousness of power.1 To be free from the passions and senses we must understand their nature; for to understand a thing is to be delivered from it. Our knowledge is the measure of our morality. An illusion is not an illusion, if we know it to be such. To know that our sensations, imaginations, and emotions are but modifications of God is to dwell within the reason. This is the same as seeing each finite thing as eternal. Any concrete thing may be regarded by the human being as a finite and isolated thing out of all relation to other objects; or the same thing may be regarded as a detail of infinity. Looked at by itself, the thing is seen partially and falsely, for 1 Spinoza also employed the Aristotelian antithesis of activity and passivity to develop his definition of virtue as power through knowledge. Activity and passivity respectively mean to him reality and negation of the finite thing. Imagination is passive, while reason and intuition are active. The large majority of our emotions are passive. But he also pointed to the group of active emotions through whose blessedness the passive emotions must be overcome so that human nature may perfect itself. These consist only in the activity of the pure impulse toward knowledge. They grow in activity with the growth of the power of the clearness of rational ideas, and thus Spinoza constructed an ideal of ethics which reaches the height of the Greek tewpía. no finite thing has its explanation in itself. It is, however, truly seen when it is regarded, to use Spinoza's own celebrated phrase, "under a certain form of eternity" (sub specie æternitatis).1 Spinoza's Mystic Ethics. Nevertheless, the ultimate and highest freedom is not a struggle at all. It is the mystic intuition of God. Intuition is the highest kind of knowledge, and has as its sole object God and his eternal necessity. All other ideas, even the reason, are derived by this necessity from God's reality. The intuition of God alone contains in itself the victory over passion. It alone absolutely releases man from slavery to the world and makes him truly free. This intuition of God is emancipation from the world. It is mystic asceticism and yet it forms the key-stone to the Spinozistic philosophy. From the point of view of the philosopher, there is nothing in the world that is morally good or bad, nothing which merits his hatred, love, fear, contempt, or pity, since all that occurs is necessary. The philosopher's knowledge of the determinism of the world lifts him above the usually conceived world of finite things to this mystic world, reconstructed by his intellectual love of nature or God. Love for God will give to everything its proper value. It is the highest form of human activity. Love for God is an absolutely disinterested feeling, and is not therefore 1 This conception of eternity is one of the most admirable in Spinoza's teaching. When man rises through the reason to the consciousness of the eternity of the truth of a thing, the thing itself is transformed, and the man himself has gained salvation. Any circle that I may draw is imperfect, every leaf upon the forest trees is defective, all moral activities are wanting, if regarded in their time-limitations. But below all the imperfections of the universe is its absolute mathematical perfectness. There is nothing so abortive and evil that it does not have its aspect of eternity. |