Chapter XXIX (3)

70. The Cartesian philosophy has been supposed to have produced a metaphysician very divergent in most of his theory from that school, Benedict Spinosa. No treatise is written in a more rigidly geometrical method than his Ethics. It rests on definitions and axioms, from which the propositions are derived in close, brief, and usually perspicuous demonstrations. The few explanations he has thought necessary are contained in scholia. Thus a fabric is erected, astonishing and bewildering in its entire effect, yet so regularly constructed, that the reader must pause and return on his steps to discover an error in the workmanship, while he cannot also but acknowledge the good faith and intimate persuasion of having attained the truth, which the acute and deep-reflecting author everywhere displays.

|Its general originality.|

71. Spinosa was born in 1632; we find by his correspondence with Oldenburg, in 1661, that he had already developed his entire scheme, and in that with De Vries in 1663, the propositions of the Ethics are alluded to numerically, as we now read them.[811] It was therefore the fruit of early meditation, at its fearlessness, its general disregard of the slow process of observation, its unhesitating dogmatism, might lead us to expect. In what degree he had availed himself of prior writers is not evident; with Descartes and Lord Bacon he was familiar, and from the former he had derived some leading tenets; but he observes both in him and Bacon what he calls mistakes as to the first cause and origin of things, their ignorance of the real nature of the human mind, and of the true sources of error.[812] The pantheistic theory of Jordano Bruno is not very remote from that of Spinosa; but the rhapsodies of the Italian, who seldom aims at proof, can hardly have supplied much to the subtle mind of the Jew of Amsterdam. Buhle has given us an exposition of the Spinosistic theory.[813] But several propositions in this I do not find in the author, and Buhle has at least, without any necessity, entirely deviated from the arrangement he found in the Ethics. This seems as unreasonable in a work so rigorously systematic, as it would be in the elements of Euclid; and I believe the following pages will prove more faithful to the text. But it is no easy task to translate and abridge a writer of such extraordinary conciseness as well as subtlety; nor is it probable that my attempt will be intelligible to those who have not habituated themselves to metaphysical inquiry.

[811] Spinosæ Opera Posthuma, p. 398-460.

[812] Cartes et Bacon tam longè a cognitione primæ causæ et
originis omnium rerum aberrarunt.... Veram naturam humanæ mentis
non cognoverunt ... veram causam erroris nunquam operati sunt.

[813] Hist. de la Philosophie, vol. iii., p. 440.

|View of his metaphysical theory.|

72. The first book or part of the Ethics is entitled, Concerning God, and contains the entire theory of Spinosa. It may even be said that this is found in a few of the first propositions; which being granted, the rest could not easily be denied; presenting, as it does, little more than new aspects of the former, or evident deductions from them. Upon eight definitions and seven axioms reposes this philosophical superstructure. A substance, by the third definition, is that, the conception of which does not require the conception of anything else as antecedent to it.[814] The attribute of a substance is whatever the mind perceives to constitute its essence.[815] The mode of a substance is its accident or affection, by means of which it is conceived.[816] In the sixth definition he says: I understand by the name of God a being absolutely infinite; that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence. Whatever expresses an essence, and involves no contradiction, may be predicated of an absolutely infinite being.[817] The most important of the axioms are the following: From a given determinate cause the effect necessarily follows; but if there be no determinate cause, no effect can follow.--The knowledge of an effect depends upon the knowledge of the cause, and includes it.--Things that have nothing in common with each other cannot be understood by means of each other; that is, the conception of one does not include that of the other.--A true idea must agree with its object.[818]

[814] Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est, et per se
concipitur; hoc est, id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu
alterius rei, a quo formari debeat. The last words are omitted by
Spinosa in a letter to De Vries (p. 463), where he repeats this
definition.

[815] Per attributum intelligo id quod intellectus de substantia
percipit, tanquam ejusdem essentiam constituens.

[816] Per modum intelligo substantiæ affectiones, sive id, quod
in alio est, per quod etiam concipitur.

[817] Per Deum intelligo Ens absolutè infinitum, hoc est,
substantiam constantem infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque
æternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit. Dico absolutè infinitum,
non autem in suo genere; quicquid enim in suo genere tantum
infinitum est, infinita de eo attributa negare possumus; quod
autem absolutè infinitum est, ad ejus essentiam pertinet,
quicquid essentiam exprimit et negationem nullam involvit.

[818] Axiomata, iii., iv., v., and vi.

73. Spinosa proceeds to his demonstrations upon the basis of these assumptions alone. Two substances, having different attributes, have nothing in common with each other; and hence one cannot be the cause of the other, since one may be conceived without involving the conception of the other; but an effect cannot be conceived without involving the knowledge of the cause.[819] It seems to be in this fourth axiom, and in the proposition grounded upon it, that the fundamental fallacy lurks. The relation between a cause and effect is surely something different from our perfect comprehension of it, or indeed from our having any knowledge of it at all; much less can the contrary assertion be deemed axiomatic. But if we should concede this postulate, it might perhaps be very difficult to resist the subsequent proofs, so ingeniously and with such geometrical rigour are they arranged.

[819] Prop. ii. and iii.

74. Two or more things cannot be distinguished, except by the diversity of their attributes, or by that of their modes. For there is nothing out of ourselves except substances and their modes. But there cannot be two substances of the same attribute, since there would be no means of distinguishing them except their modes or affections; and every substance, being prior in order of time to its modes, may be considered independently of them; hence, two such substances could not be distinguished at all. One substance therefore cannot be the cause of another; for they cannot have the same attribute, that is, anything in common with one another.[820] Every substance therefore is self-caused; that is, its essence implies its existence.[821] It is also necessarily infinite, for it would otherwise be terminated by some other of the same nature and necessarily existing; but two substances cannot have the same attribute, and therefore cannot both possess necessary existence.[822] The more reality or existence any being possesses, the more attributes are to be ascribed to it. This he says appears by the definition of an attribute.[823] The proof however, is surely not manifest, nor do we clearly apprehend what he meant by degrees of reality or existence. But of this theorem he was very proud. I look upon the demonstration, he says in a letter, as capital (palmariam) that the more attributes we ascribe to any being, the more we are compelled to acknowledge its existence; that is, the more we conceive it as true and not a mere chimera.[824] And from this he derived the real existence of God, though the former proof seems collateral to it. God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each expressing an eternal and infinite power, necessarily exists.[825] For such an essence involves existence. And, besides this, if anything does not exist, a cause must be given for its non-existence, since this requires one as much as existence itself.[826] The cause may be either in the nature of the thing, as, e. gr. a square circle cannot exist by the circle’s nature, or in something extrinsic. But neither of these can prevent the existence of God. The later propositions in Spinosa are chiefly obvious corollaries from the definitions and a few of the first propositions which contain the whole theory, which he proceeds to expand.

[820] Prop. vi.

[821] Prop. vii.

[822] Prop. viii.

[823] Prop. ix.

[824] P. 463. This is in the letter to De Vries, above quoted.

[825] Prop. xi.

[826] If twenty men exist, neither more nor less, an extrinsic
reason must be given for this precise number, since the
definition of a man does not involve it. Prop. viii., Schol. ii.

75. There can be no substance but God. Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be conceived without God.[827] For he is the sole substance, and modes cannot be conceived without a substance; but besides substance and mode nothing exists. God is not corporeal, but body is a mode of God, and therefore uncreated. God is the permanent, but not the transient cause of all things.[828] He is the efficient cause of their essence, as well as their existence, since otherwise their essence might be conceived without God, which has been shown to be absurd. Thus, particular things are but the affections of God’s attributes, or modes in which they are determinately expressed.[829]

[827] Prop. xiv.

[828] Deus est omnium rerum causa immanens, sed non transiens.
Prop. xviii.

[829] Prop. xxv. and Coroll.

76. This pantheistic scheme is the fruitful mother of many paradoxes, upon which Spinosa proceeds to dwell. There is no contingency, but everything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature, both as to its existence and operation; nor could anything be produced by God otherwise than as it is.[830] His power is the same as his essence; for he is the necessary cause both of himself and of all things, and it is as impossible for us to conceive him not to act as not to exist.[831] God, considered in the attributes of his infinite substance, is the same as nature, that is, _natura naturans_; but nature, in another sense, or _natura naturata_, expresses but the modes under which the divine attributes appear.[832] And intelligence, considered in act, even though infinite, should be referred to _natura naturata_; for intelligence, in this sense, is but a mode of thinking, which can only be conceived by means of our conception of thinking in the abstract, that is, by an attribute of God.[833] The faculty of thinking, as distinguished from the act, as also those of desiring, loving, and the rest, Spinosa explicitly denies to exist at all.

[830] Prop. xxix.-xxxiii.

[831] Prop. xxxix. and part ii. prop. iii. Schol.

[832] Schol. in prop. xxix.

[833] Prop. xxxi. The atheism of Spinosa is manifest from this
single proposition.

77. In an appendix to the first chapter, De Deo, Spinosa controverts what he calls the prejudice about final causes. Men are born ignorant of causes, but merely conscious of their own appetites, by which they desire their own good. Hence, they only care for the final cause of their own actions or those of others, and inquire no farther when they are satisfied about these. And finding many things in themselves and in nature, serving as means to a certain good, which things they know not to be provided by themselves, they have believed that someone has provided them, arguing from the analogy of the means they in other instances themselves employ. Hence, they have imagined gods, and these gods they suppose to consult the good of men in order to be worshipped by them, and have devised every mode of superstitious devotion to ensure the favour of these divinities. And finding in the midst of so many beneficial things in nature not a few of an opposite effect, they have ascribed them to the anger of the gods, on account of the neglect of men to worship them; nor has experience of calamities, falling alike on the pious and impious, cured them of this belief, choosing rather to acknowledge their ignorance of the reason why good and evil are thus distributed, than to give up their theory. Spinosa thinks the hypothesis of final causes refuted by his proposition, that all things happen by eternal necessity. Moreover, if God were to act for an end, he must desire something which he wants; for it is acknowledged by theologians that he acts for his own sake, and not for the sake of things created.

78. Men having satisfied themselves that all things were created for them, have invented names to distinguish that as good which tends to their benefit; and believing themselves free, have gotten the notions of right and wrong, praise and dispraise. And when they can easily apprehend and recollect the relations of things, they call them well ordered, if not ill ordered; and then say that God created all things in order, as if order were anything, except in regard to our imagination of it; and thus they ascribe imagination to God himself, unless they mean that he created things for the sake of imagining them.

79. It has been sometimes doubted whether the Spinosistic philosophy excludes altogether an infinite intelligence. That it rejected a moral providence or creative mind is manifest in every proposition. His Deity could at most be but a cold, passive intelligence, lost to our understandings and feelings in its metaphysical infinity. It was not, however, in fact, so much as this. It is true that in a few passages we find what seems at first a dim recognition of the fundamental principle of theism. In one of his letters to Oldenburg, he asserts an infinite power of thinking, which, considered in its infinity, embraces all nature as its object, and of which the thoughts proceed according to the order of nature, being its correlative ideas.[834] But afterwards he rejected the term, power of thinking, altogether. The first proposition of the second part of the Ethics, or that entitled, On the Mind, runs thus: Thought is an attribute of God, or, God is a thinking being. Yet this, when we look at the demonstration, vanishes in an abstraction destructive of personality.[835] And, in fact, we cannot reflect at all on the propositions already laid down by Spinosa, without perceiving that they annihilate every possible hypothesis in which the being of a God can be intelligibly stated.

[834] Statuo dari in natura potentiam infinitam cogitandi quæ
quatenus infinita in se continet totam naturam objectivè, et
cujus cogitationes procedunt eodem modo ac natura, ejus nimirum
edictum, p. 441. In another place he says, perhaps at some
expense of his usual candour. Agnosco interim, id quod summam
mihi præbet satisfactionem et mentis tranquillitatem, cuncta
potentia Entis summè perfecti et ejus immutabili ita fieri
decreto, p. 498. What follows is in the same strain. But Spinosa
had wrought himself up, like Bruno, to a mystical personification
of his infinite unity.

[835] Singulares cogitationes, sive hæc et illa cogitatio, modi
sunt, qui Dei naturam certo et determinto modo exprimunt.
Competit ergo Dei attributum, cujus conceptum singulares omnes
cogitationes involvunt, per quod etiam concipiuntur. Est igitur
cogitatio unum ex infinitis Dei attributis quod Dei æternam et
infinitam essentiam exprimit, sive Deus est res cogitans.

80. The second book of the Ethics begins, like the first, with definitions and axioms. Body he defines to be a certain and determinate mode expressing the essence of God, considered as extended. The essence of anything he defines to be that, according to the affirmation or negation of which the thing exists or otherwise. An idea is a conception which the mind forms as a thinking being. And he prefers to say conception than perception, because the latter seems to imply the presence of an object. In the third axiom he says: Modes of thinking, such as love, desire, or whatever name we may give to the affections of the mind, cannot exist without an idea of their object, but an idea may exist with no other mode of thinking.[836] And in the fifth: We perceive no singular things besides bodies and modes of thinking; thus distinguishing, like Locke, between ideas of sensation and of reflection.

[836] Modi cogitandi, ut amor, cupiditas, vel quocunque
nomine affectus animi insigniuntur, non dantur nisi in eodem
individuo detur idea rei amatæ, desideratæ, &c. At idea dari
potest, quamvis nullus alius detur cogitandi modus.

81. Extension, by the second proposition, is an attribute of God as well as thought. As it follows from the infinite extension of God, that all bodies are portions of his substance, inasmuch as they cannot be conceived without it, so all particular acts of intelligence are portions of God’s infinite intelligence, and thus all things are in him. Man is not a substance, but something which is in God, and cannot be conceived without him; that is, an affection or mode of the divine substance expressing its nature in a determinate manner.[837] The human mind is not a substance, but an idea constitutes its actual being, and it must be the idea of an existing thing.[838] In this he plainly loses sight of the percipient in the perception; but it was the inevitable result of the fundamental sophisms of Spinosa to annihilate personal consciousness. The human mind, he afterwards asserts, is part of the infinite intellect of God; and when we say, the mind perceives this or that, it is only that God, not as infinite, but so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, has such or such ideas.[839]

[837] Prop. x.

[838] Quod actuale mentis humanæ esse constituit, nihil aliud est
quam idea rei alicujus singularis actu existentis. This is an
anticipation of what we find in Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature,
the negation of a substance, or Ego, to which paradox no one can
come except a professed metaphysician.

[839] Prop. xi., coroll.

82. The object of the human mind is body actually existing.[840] He proceeds to explain the connection of the human body with the mind, and the association of ideas. But in all this advancing always synthetically and by demonstration, he becomes frequently obscure if not sophistical. The idea of the human mind is in God, and is united to the mind itself in the same manner as the latter is to the body.[841] The obscurity and subtlety of this proposition are not relieved by the demonstration; but in some of these passages we may observe a singular approximation to the theory of Malebranche. Both, though with very different tenets on the highest subjects, had been trained in the same school; and if Spinosa had brought himself to acknowledge the personal distinctness of the Supreme Being from his intelligent creation, he might have passed for one of those mystical theosophists, who were not averse to an objective pantheism.

[840] Prop. xiii.

[841] Mentis humanæ datur etiam in Deo idea, sive cognitio, quæ
in Deo eodem modo sequitur, et ad Deum odem modo refertur, ac
idea sive cognitio corporis humani. Prop. xx. Hæc mentis idea
eodem modo unita est menti, ac ipsa mens unita est corpori.

83. The mind does not know itself, except so far as it receives ideas of the affections of the body.[842] But these ideas of sensation do not give an adequate knowledge of an external body, nor of the human body itself.[843] The mind therefore has but an inadequate and confused knowledge of anything, so long as it judges only by fortuitous perceptions; but may attain one clear and distinct by internal reflection and comparison.[844] No positive idea can be called false; for there can be no such idea without God, and all ideas in God are true, that is, correspond with their object.[845] Falsity therefore consists in that privation of truth, which arises from inadequate ideas. An adequate idea he has defined to be one which contains no incompatibility, without regard to the reality of its supposed correlative object.

[842] Prop. xxiii.

[843] Prop. xxv.

[844] Schol., Prop. xxix.

[845] Prop. xxxii., xxxiii., xxxv.

84. All bodies agree in some things, or have something in common: of these all men have adequate ideas;[846] and this is the origin of what are called common notions, which all men possess; as extension, duration, number. But to explain the nature of universals, Spinosa observes, that the human body can only form at the same time a certain number of distinct images; if this number be exceeded, they become confused; and as the mind perceives distinctly just so many images as can be formed in the body, when these are confused, the mind will also perceive them confusedly, and will comprehend them under one attribute, as Man, Horse, Dog; the mind perceiving a number of such images, but not their differences of stature, colours and the like. And these notions will not be alike in all minds, varying according to the frequency with which the parts of the complex image have occurred. Thus those who have contemplated most frequently the erect figure of man will think of him as a perpendicular animal, others as two-legged, others as unfeathered, others as rational. Hence, so many disputes among philosophers who have tried to explain natural things by mere images.[847]

[846] Prop. viii.

[847] Schol., prop. xl.

85. Thus we form universal ideas; first, by singulars, represented by the senses confusedly, imperfectly and disorderly; secondly, by signs, that is, by associating the remembrance of things with words; both of which he calls imagination, or primi generis cognitio; thirdly, by what he calls reason, or secundi generis cognitio; and fourthly, by intuitive knowledge, or tertii generis cognitio.[848] Knowledge of the first kind is the only source of error; the second and third being necessarily true.[849] These alone enable us to distinguish truth from falsehood. Reason contemplates things not as contingent but necessary; and whoever has a true idea, knows certainly that his idea is true. Every idea of a singular existing thing involves the eternal and infinite being of God. For nothing can be conceived without God, and the ideas of all things, having God for their cause, considered under the attribute of which they are modes, must involve the conception of the attribute, that is, the being of God.[850]

[848] Schol. ii., prop. xl.

[849] Prop. xli., xlii, et sequent.

[850] Prop. xlv.

86. It is highly necessary to distinguish images, ideas, and words, which many confound. Those who think ideas consists in images which they perceive, fancy that ideas of which we can form no image are but arbitrary figments. They look at ideas, as pictures on a tablet, and hence do not understand that an idea, as such, involves an affirmation or negation. And those who confound words with ideas, fancy they can will something contrary to what they perceive, because they can affirm or deny it in words. But these prejudices will be laid aside by him who reflects that thought does not involve the conception of extension; and therefore that an idea, being a mode of thought, neither consists in images nor in words, the essence of which consists in corporeal motions, not involving the conception of thought.[851]

[851] Schol., prop. xlix.

87. The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite being of God. But men cannot imagine God as they can bodies, and hence have not that clear perception of his being which they have of that of bodies, and have also perplexed themselves by associating the word God with sensible images, which it is hard to avoid. This is the chief source of all error, that men do not apply names to things rightly. For they do not err in their own minds, but in this application; as men who cast up wrong see different numbers in their mind from those in the true result.[852]

[852] Prop. xlvii. Atque hinc pleræque oriuntur controversiæ,
nempe, quia homines mentem suam non recte explicant, vel quia
alterius mentem male interpretantur.

88. The mind has no free will, but is determined by a cause, which itself is determined by some other, and so for ever. For the mind is but a mode of thinking and, therefore cannot be the free cause of its own actions. Nor has it any absolute faculty of loving, desiring, understanding; these being only metaphysical abstractions.[853] Will and understanding are one and the same thing; and volitions are only affirmations or negations, each of which belongs to the essence of the idea affirmed or denied.[854] In this there seems to be not only an extraordinary deviation from common language, but an absence of any meaning which, to my apprehension at least, is capable of being given to his words. Yet we have seen something of the same kind said by Malebranche; and it will also be found in a recently published work of Cudworth,[855] a writer certainly uninfluenced by either of these, so that it may be suspected of having some older authority.

[853] Prop. xlviii.

[854] Prop. xlix.

[855] See Cudworth’s Treatise on Free will (1838), p. 20, where
the will and understanding are purposely, and, I think, very
erroneously confounded.

|Spinosa’s theory of action and passion.|

89. In the third part of this treatise, Spinosa comes to the consideration of the passions. Most who have written on moral subjects, he says, have rather treated man as something out of nature, or as a kind of imperium in imperio, than as part of the general order. They have conceived him to enjoy a power of disturbing that order by his own determination, and ascribed his weakness and inconstancy not to the necessary laws of the system, but to some strange defect in himself, which they cease not to lament, deride, or execrate. But the acts of mankind, and the passions from which they proceed, are in reality but links in the series, and proceed in harmony with the common laws of universal nature.

90. We are said to act when anything takes place within us, or without us, for which we are an adequate cause; that is, when it may be explained by means of our own nature alone. We are said to be acted upon, when anything takes place within us which cannot wholly be explained by our own nature. The affections of the body which increase or diminish its power of action, and the ideas of those affections, he denominates passions (affectus). Neither the body can determine the mind to thinking, nor can the mind determine the body to motion or rest. For all that takes place in body must be caused by God, considered under his attribute of extension, and all that takes place in mind must be caused by God under his attribute of thinking. The mind and body are but one thing, considered under different attributes; the order of action and passion in the body being the same in nature with that of action and passion in the mind. But men, though ignorant how far the natural powers of the body reach, ascribe its operations to the determination of the mind, veiling their ignorance in specious words. For if they alledge that the body cannot act without the mind, it may be answered that the mind cannot think till it is impelled by the body, nor are the volitions of the mind anything else than its appetites, which are modified by the body.

91. All things endeavoured to continue in their actual being; this endeavour being nothing else than their essence, which causes them to be, until some exterior cause destroys their being. The mind is conscious of its own endeavour to continue as it is, which is, in other words, the appetite that seeks self-preservation; what the mind is thus conscious of seeking, it judges to be good, and not inversely. Many things increase or diminish the power of action in the body, and all such things have a corresponding effect on the power of thinking in the mind. Thus, it undergoes many changes, and passes through different stages of more or less perfect power of thinking. Joy is the name of a passion, in which the mind passes to a greater perfection or power of thinking; grief, one in which it passes to a less. Spinosa, in the rest of this book, deduces all the passions from these two and from desire; but as the development of his theory is rather long, and we have already seen that its basis is not quite intelligible, it will be unnecessary to dwell longer upon the subject. His analysis of the passions may be compared with that of Hobbes.

|Character of Spinosism.|

92. Such is the metaphysical theory of Spinosa, in as concise a form as I found myself able to derive it from his Ethics. It is a remarkable proof, and his moral system will furnish another, how an undeviating adherence to strict reasoning may lead a man of great acuteness and sincerity from the paths of truth. Spinosa was truly, what Voltaire has with rather less justice called Clarke, a reasoning machine. A few leading theorems, too hastily taken up as axiomatic, were sufficient to make him sacrifice, with no compromise or hesitation, not only every principle of religion and moral right, but the clear intuitive notions of common sense. If there are two axioms more indisputable than any others, they are that ourselves exist, and that our existence is exclusive of any other being. Yet both these are lost in the pantheism of Spinosa, as they had always been in that delusive reverie of the imagination. In asserting that the being of the human mind consists in the idea of an existing thing presented to it, this subtle metaphysician fell into the error of the school which he most disdained, as deriving all knowledge from perception, that of the Aristotelians. And, extending this confusion of consciousness with perception to the infinite substance, or substratum of particular ideas, he was led to deny it the self, or conscious personality, without which the name of Deity can only be given in a sense deceptive of the careless reader, and inconsistent with the use of language. It was an equally legitimate consequence of his original sophism to deny all moral agency, in the sense usually received, to the human mind, and even, as we have seen, to confound action and passion themselves, in all but name, as mere phenomena in the eternal sequence of things.

93. It was one great error of Spinosa to entertain too arrogant a notion of the human faculties, in which, by dint of his own subtle demonstrations, he pretended to show a capacity of adequately comprehending the nature of what he denominated God. And this was accompanied by a rigid dogmatism, no one proposition being stated with hesitation, by a disregard of experience, at least as the basis of reasoning, and by an uniform preference of the synthetic method. Most of those, he says, who have turned their minds to those subjects have fallen into error, because they have not begun with the contemplation of the divine nature, which both in itself and in order of knowledge is first, but with sensible things, which ought to have been last. Hence, he seems to have reckoned Bacon, and even Descartes, mistaken in their methods.

94. All pantheism must have originated in overstraining the infinity of the divine attributes till the moral part of religion was annihilated in its metaphysics. It was the corruption, or rather, if we may venture the phrase, the suicide of theism; nor could this strange theory have arisen, except where we know it did arise, among those who had elevated their conceptions above the vulgar polytheism that surrounded them to a sense of the unity of the Divine nature.

95. Spinosa does not essentially differ from the pantheists of old. He conceived, as they had done, that the infinity of God required the exclusion of all other substance; that he was infinite _ab omni parte_, and not only in certain senses. And probably the loose and hyperbolical tenets of the schoolmen, derived from ancient philosophy, ascribing, as a matter of course, a metaphysical infinity to all the divine attributes, might appear to sanction those primary positions, from which Spinosa, unfettered by religion, even in outward profession, went on “sounding his dim and perilous track” to the paradoxes that have thrown discredit on his name. He had certainly built much on the notion that the essence or definition of the Deity involved his actuality or existence, to which Descartes had given vogue.

96. Notwithstanding the leading errors of this philosopher, his clear and acute understanding perceived many things which baffle ordinary minds. Thus, he well saw and well stated the immateriality of thought. Oldenburg, in one of his letters, had demurred to this, and reminded Spinosa that it was still controverted whether thought might not be a bodily motion. “Be it so,” replied the other, “though I am far from admitting it; but at least you must allow that extension, so far as extension, is not the same as thought.”[856] It is from inattention to this simple truth that all materialism, as it has been called, has sprung. Its advocates confound the union between thinking and extension or matter (be it, if they will, an indissoluble one) with the identity of the two, which is absurd and inconceivable. “Body,” says Spinosa in one of his definitions, “is not terminated by thinking, nor thinking by body.”[857] This also does not ill express the fundamental difference of matter and mind; there is an incommensurability about them, which prevents one from bounding the other, because they can never be placed in juxtaposition.

[856] At ais, forte cogitatio est actus corporeus. Sit, quamvis
nullus concedam; sed hoc unum non negabis, extensionem, quoad
extensionem, non esse cogitationem. Epist. iv.

[857] Corpus dicitur finitum, quia aliud semper majus concipimus.
Sic cogitatio alia cogitatione terminatur. At corpus non
terminatur cogitatione, nec cogitatio corpore.

|Glanvil’s Scepsis Scientifica.|

97. England, about the æra of the Restoration, began to make a struggle against the metaphysical creed of the Aristotelians, as well as against their natural philosophy. A remarkable work, but one so scarce as to be hardly known at all, except by name, was published by Glanvil in 1661, with the title, the Vanity of Dogmatizing. A second edition, in 1663, considerably altered, is entitled Scepsis Scientifica.[858] This edition has a dedication to the Royal Society, which comes in place of a fanciful preface, wherein he had expatiated on the bodily and mental perfections of his protoplast, the father of mankind.[859] But in proportion to the extravagant language he employs to extol Adam before his lapse, is the depreciation of his unfortunate posterity, not, as common among theologians, with respect to their moral nature, but to their reasoning faculties. The scheme of Glanvil’s book is to display the ignorance of man, and especially to censure the Peripatetic philosophy of the schools. It is, he says, captious and verbal, and yet does not adhere itself to any constant sense of words, but huddles together insignificant terms, and unintelligible definitions; it deals with controversies, and seeks for no new discovery or physical truth. Nothing, he says, can be demonstrated but when the contrary is impossible, and of this there are not many instances. He launches into a strain of what may be called scepticism, but answered his purpose in combating the dogmatic spirit still unconquered in our academical schools. Glanvil had studied the new philosophy, and speaks with ardent eulogy of “that miracle of men, the illustrious Descartes.” Many, if not most, of his own speculations are tinged with a Cartesian colouring. He was however far more sceptical than Descartes, or even than Malebranche. Some passages from so rare and so acute a work may deserve to be chosen, both for their own sakes, and in order to display the revolution which was at work in speculative philosophy.

[858] This Book, I believe, especially in the second edition, is
exceedingly scarce. The editors, however, of the Biographia
Britannica art. Glanvil, had seen it, and also Dugald Stewart.
The first edition, or Vanity of Dogmatizing, is in the Bodleian
Catalogue, and both are in the British Museum.

[859] Thus, among other extravagances worthy of the Talmud, he
says, “Adam needed no spectacles. The acuteness of his natural
optics (if conjecture may have credit), showed him much of the
celestial magnificence and bravery without a Galileo’s tube; and
it is most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much
of this upper world as we with all the advantages of art. It may
be it was as absurd even in the judgment of his senses, that the
sun and stars should be so very much less than this globe, as the
contrary seems in ours; and it is not unlikely that he had as
clear a perception of the earth’s motion as we have of its
quiescence.” p. 5, edit. 1661. In the second edition, he still
adheres to the hypothesis of intellectual degeneracy, but states
it with less of rhapsody.

98. “In the unions which we understand the extremes are reconciled by interceding participations of natures, which have somewhat of either. But body and spirit stand at such a distance in their essential compositions, that to suppose an uniter of a middle construction, that should partake of some of the qualities of both, is unwarranted by any of our faculties, yea, most absonous to our reasons; since there is not any the least affinity betwixt length, breadth, and thickness, and apprehension, judgment, and discourse; the former of which are the most immediate results, if not essentials of matter, the latter of spirit.”[860]

[860] Scepsis Scientifica, p. 16. We have just seen something
similar in Spinosa.

99. “How is it, and by what art does it (the soul), read that such an image or stroke in matter (whether that of her vehicle or of the brain, the case is the same), signifies such an object? Did we learn an alphabet in our embryo state? And how comes it to pass that we are not aware of any such congenite apprehensions? We know what we know; but do we know any more? That by diversity of motions we should spell out figures, distances, magnitudes, colours, things not resembled by them, we must attribute to some secret deduction. But what this deduction should be, or by what medium this knowledge is advanced, is as dark as ignorance. One that hath not the knowledge of letters may see the figures, but comprehends not the meaning included in them; an infant may hear the sounds and see the motion of the lips, but hath no conception conveyed by them, not knowing what they are intended to signify. So our souls, though they might have perceived the motions and images themselves by simple sense, yet, without some implicit inference, it seems inconceivable how by that means they should apprehend their anti-types. The striking of divers filaments of the brain cannot well be supposed to represent distances, except some kind of inference be allotted us in our faculties; the concession of which will only stead us as a refuge for ignorance, when we shall meet what we would seem to shun.”[861] Glanvil, in this forcible statement of the heterogeneity of sensations, with the objects that suggest them, has but trod in the steps of the whole Cartesian school, but he did not mix this up with those crude notions that halt half way between immaterialism and its opposite; and afterwards well exposes the theories of accounting for the memory by means of images in the brain, which, in various ways, Aristotle, Descartes, Digby, Gassendi, and Hobbes had propounded, and which we have seen so favourite a speculation of Malebranche.

[861] P. 22, 23.

100. It would be easy to quote many paragraphs of uncommon vivacity and acuteness from this forgotten treatise. The style is eminently spirited and eloquent; a little too figurative, like that of Locke, but less blameably, because Glanvil is rather destroying than building up. Every bold and original thought of others finds a willing reception in Glanvil’s mind, and his confident, impetuous style gives them an air of novelty which makes them pass for his own. He stands forward as a mutineer against authority, against educational prejudice, against reverence for antiquity.[862] No one thinks more intrepidly for himself; and it is probable that, even in what seems mere superstition, he had been rather misled by some paradoxical hypothesis of his own ardent genius, than by slavishly treading in the steps of others.[863]

[862] “Now, if we inquire the reason why the mathematics and
mechanic arts have so much got the start in growth of other
sciences, we shall find it probably resolved into this as one
considerable cause, that their progress hath not been retarded by
that reverential awe of former discoveries, which hath been so
great a hindrance to theorical improvements. For, as the noble
Lord Verulam hath noted, we have a mistaken apprehension of
antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world’s non-age.
Antiquitas sæculi est juventus mundi. ‘Twas this vain idolising
of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent
citations, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor
deserving it.--Methinks it is a pitiful piece of knowledge that
can be learned from an index, and a poor ambition to be rich in
the inventory of another’s treasure. To boast a memory, the most
that these pedants can aim at, is but a humble ostentation.”
P. 104.

[863] “That the fancy of one man should bind the thoughts of
another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be
thought impossible; which yet, if we look deeply into the matter,
wants not its probability.” P. 146. He dwells more on this, but
the passage is too long to extract. It is remarkable that he
supposes a subtle æther (like that of the modern Mesmerists), to
be the medium of communication in such cases; and had also a
notion of explaining these sympathies by help of the anima mundi,
or mundane spirit.

101. Glanvil sometimes quotes Lord Bacon, but he seems to have had the ambition of contending with the Novum Organum in some of its brilliant passages, and has really developed the doctrine of _idols_ with uncommon penetration, as well as force of language. “Our initial age is like the melted wax to the prepared seal, capable of any impression from the documents of our teachers. The half-moon or cross are indifferent to its reception; and we may with equal facility write on this _rasa tabula_ Turk or Christian. To determine this indifferency our first task is to learn the creed of our country, and our next to maintain it. We seldom examine our receptions, more than children do their catechisms, but by a careless greediness swallow all at a venture. For implicit faith is a virtue, where orthodoxy is the object. Some will not be at the trouble of a trial, others are scared from attempting it. If we do, ’tis not by a sun-beam or ray of light, but by a flame that is kindled by our affections, and fed by the fuel of our anticipations. And thus, like the hermit, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to be circumscribed by the confines of our belief and the doctrines we were brought up in.”[864] Few books, I think, are more deserving of being reprinted than the Scepsis Scientifica of Glanvil.

[864] P. 95.

|His Plus Ultra.|

102. Another bold and able attack was made on the ancient philosophy by Glanvil in his “Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668.” His tone is peremptory and imposing, animated and intrepid, such as befits a warrior in literature. Yet he was rather acute by nature, than deeply versed in learning, and talks of Vieta and Descarte’s algebra so as to show he had little knowledge of the science, or of what they had done for it.[865] His animosity against Aristotle is unreasonable, and he was plainly an incompetent judge of that philosopher’s general deserts. Of Bacon and Boyle he speaks with just eulogy. Nothing can be more free and bold than Glanvil’s assertion of the privilege of judging, for himself in religion;[866] and he had doubtless a perfect right to believe in witchcraft.

[865] Plus Ultra, p. 24 and 33.

[866] P. 142.

|Dalgarno.|

103. George Dalgarno, a native of Aberdeen, conceived, and, as it seemed to him, carried into effect the idea of an universal language and character. His Ara Signorum, vulgo Character Universalis et Lingua Philosophica, Lond., 1661, is dedicated to Charles II. in this philosophical character, which must have been as great a mystery to the sovereign as to his subjects. This dedication is followed by a royal proclamation in good English, inviting all to study this useful art, which had been recommended by divers learned men, Wilkins, Wallis, Ward, and others, “judging it to be of singular use for facilitating the matter of communication and intercourse between people of different languages.” The scheme of Dalgarno is fundamentally bad, in that he assumes himself, or the authors he follows, to have given a complete distribution of all things and ideas; after which his language is only an artificial scheme of symbols. It is evident that until objects are truly classified, a representative method of signs can only rivet and perpetuate error. We have but to look at his tabular synopsis to see that his ignorance of physics, in the largest sense of the word, renders his scheme deficient; and he has also committed the error of adopting the combinations of the ordinary alphabet, with a little help from the Greek, which, even with his slender knowledge of species, soon leave him incapable of expressing them. But Dalgarno has several acute remarks; and it deserves especially to be observed, that he anticipated the famous discovery of the Dutch philologers, namely, that all other parts of speech may be reduced to the noun, dexterously, if not successfully, resolving the verb substantive into an affirmative particle.[867]

[867] Tandem mihi affulsit clarior lux; accuratius enim
examinando omnium notionum analysin logicam, percepi nullam esse
particulam quæ non derivetur a nomine aliquo prædicamentali, et
omnes particulas esse vere casus seu modos notionum nominalium,
p. 120. He does not seem to have arrived at this conclusion by
etymological analysis, but by his own logical theories.

The verb-substantive, he says, is equivalent to _ita_. Thus,
Petrus est in domo, means, Petrus--ita--in domo. That is, it
expresses an idea of apposition or conformity between a subject
and predicate. This is a theory to which a man might be led by
the habit of considering propositions logically, and thus
reducing all verbs to the verb-substantive; and it is not
deficient, at least, in plausibility.

|Wilkins.|

104. Wilkins, bishop of Chester, one of the most ingenious men of his age, published in 1668 his Essay towards a Philosophical Language, which has this advantage over that of Dalgarno, that it abandons the alphabet, and consequently admits of a greater variety of characters. It is not a new language, but a more analytical scheme of characters for English. Dalgarno seems to have known something of it, though he was the first to publish, and glances at “a more difficult way of writing English.” Wilkins also intimates that Dalgarno’s compendious method would not succeed. His own has the same fault of a premature classification of things; and it is very fortunate that neither of these ingenious but presumptuous attempts to fasten down the progressive powers of the human mind by the cramps of association had the least success.[868]

[868] Dalgarno, many years afterwards, turned his attention to a
subject of no slight interest, even in mere philosophy, the
instruction of the deaf and dumb. His Didascalocophus is perhaps
the first attempt to found this on the analysis of language. But
it is not so philosophical as what has since been effected.

|Locke on human Understanding.|

|The merits.|

105. But from these partial and now very obscure endeavours of English writers in metaphysical philosophy we come at length to the work that has eclipsed every other, and given to such inquiries whatever popularity they ever possessed, the Essay, of Locke on the human Understanding. Neither the writings of Descartes, as I conceive, nor perhaps those of Hobbes, so far as strictly metaphysical, had excited much attention in England beyond the class of merely studious men. But the Essay on Human Understanding was frequently reprinted within a few years from its publication, and became the acknowledged code of English philosophy.[869] The assaults it had to endure in the author’s lifetime, being deemed to fail, were of service to its reputation; and considerably more than half a century was afterwards to elapse before any writer in our language (nor was the case very different in France, after the patronage accorded to it by Voltaire) could with much chance of success question any leading doctrine of its author. Several circumstances no doubt conspired with its intrinsic excellence to establish so paramount a rule in an age that boasted of peculiar independence of thinking, and full of intelligent and inquisitive spirits. The sympathy of an English public with Locke’s tenets as to government and religion was among the chief of these; and the reaction that took place in a large portion of the reading classes towards the close of the eighteenth century turned in some measure the tide even in metaphysical disquisition. It then became fashionable sometimes to accuse Locke of preparing the way for scepticism; a charge which, if it had been truly applicable to some of his opinions, ought rather to have been made against the long line of earlier writers with whom he held them in common; sometimes, with more pretence, to alledge that he had conceded too much to materialism; sometimes to point out and exaggerate other faults and errors of his Essay, till we have seemed in danger of forgetting that it is perhaps the first, and still the most complete chart of the human mind which has been laid down; the most ample repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being; and the one book which we are compelled to name as the first in metaphysical science. Locke had not, it may be said, the luminous perspicacity of language we find in Descartes, and, when he does not soar too high, in Malebranche; but he had more judgment, more caution, more patience, more freedom from paradox, and from the sources of paradox, vanity and love of system, than either. We have no denial of sensation to brutes, no reference of mathematical truths to the will of God, no oscillation between the extremes of doubt and of positiveness, no bewildering mysticism, no unintelligible chaos of words. Certainly neither Gassendi nor even Hobbes could be compared with him; and it might be asked of the admirers of later philosophers, those of Berkeley, or Hume, or Hartley, or Reid, or Stewart, or Brown, without naming any on the continent of Europe, whether in the extent of their researches, or in the originality of their discoveries, any of these names ought to stand on a level with that of Locke. One of the greatest I have mentioned, and one, who though candid towards Locke, had no prejudice whatever, in his favour, has extolled the first two books of the Essay on Human Understanding, which yet he deems in many respects inferior to the third and fourth, as “a precious accession to the theory of the human mind; as the richest contribution of well-observed and well-described facts which was ever bequeathed by a single individual; and as the indisputable, though not always acknowledged, source of some of the most refined conclusions with respect to the intellectual phenomena, which have been since brought to light by succeeding inquirers.”[870]

[869] It was abridged at Oxford, and used by some tutors as early
as 1695. But the heads of the university came afterwards to a
resolution to discourage the reading of it. Stillingfleet, among
many others, wrote against the Essay; and Locke, as is well
known, answered the bishop. I do not know that the latter makes
altogether so poor a figure as has been taken for granted; but
the defence of Locke will seem in most instances satisfactory.
Its success in public opinion contributed much to the renown of
his work; for Stillingfleet, though not at all conspicuous as a
philosopher, enjoyed a great deal of reputation, and the world
can seldom understand why a man who excels in one province of
literature should fail in another.

[870] Stewart’s Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia, part ii.

|Its defects.|