A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

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.