INTRODUCTION.
THE EDITOR TO
THE READER.
The theological and political Treatise (Tractatus
Theologico-politicus) of Benedict de Spinoza, now presented to the English
reader, is the most generally interesting of the works of this celebrated
writer, — celebrated, we say, for there is no one of any culture who has
not heard of Spinoza, though it must be owned that few know more of the man
than his name. Spinoza, nevertheless, set his mark upon the chart of human
progress, and no history of Philosophy would be complete that did not devote a
chapter to the consideration of his metaphysical views and conclusions. The
vulgar, however, and their ministers the theologians, have hitherto been the
grand arbiters in matters touching the mysteries of God, the Soul, and the
religious and moral nature of man, and Spinoza, opposed to theologians and
filled with contempt for the vulgar, having no reverence for mere antiquity and
no respect for prescription, daring moreover to think independently, and, above
all, daring to give utterance to his thoughts, has still been denounced as a
dangerous person, called atheist as matter of course, his writings proscribed,
and his really spotless name and fame vilified and put to the ban. In the
exegetical and critical Treatise which follows we are at no loss to discover
the grounds of all the theological hate that has so long clung to the name of
Spinoza. Purely philosophical and speculative writings scarcely attract the
notice of the many, and only afford matter of discussion to philosophers and
learned persons, whose interests never differ from those of the body politic at
large; but critical inquiries, in whatever spirit conceived, almost necessarily
jar with the opinions and prejudices of individuals, and perchance are found in
opposition to the interests of large and influential classes of society, who
forthwith band themselves together and declare war to the death against the
inquirer. So has it fared with Spinoza. Brought into intimate contact, as a
mere youth, with the Hebrew Scriptures, the Talmud, and the exegetical writings
of the Jewish Rabbins, — particularly, as it would seem, with the Moré
Nebouchim, or Perplexed one's Guide of the celebrated Rabbi Moses Maimonides
of Cordova, and little satisfied with the accredited and orthodox mode of
getting over the many difficulties encountered in the Old Testament, Spinoza
was led by natural taste to examine the ancient records of the faith of his
forefathers for himself, and bringing to the task great abilities, abundant
learning, entire freedom from prejudice, and a fearless spirit, he gradually
arrived at conclusions little in accordance with those generally entertained.
The results of his inquiries he embodied in the work now given in an English
dress, the purpose of which, besides the critical and exegetical element, is to
show that the freest discussion, both of religious and political principles, is
not only consistent with true piety and the safety of the State, but cannot be
forbidden without detriment and danger to both.[1]
It is not surprising that the appearance of
this remarkable work should immediately have produced a great sensation in the
theological world, nor that it should have been regarded as a most serious
assault against the accredited systems of religious prescription and belief of
Christendom. Yet was this, or such another book, almost a necessity of the
advancing European enlightenment. It is, in fact, but the first-fruits in
religious criticism of that spirit of discussion which had been evoked by the
Reformation — or rather of that spirit of free inquiry of which the Reformation
itself was the expression. When the shackles of tradition had been cast off,
when the prison of unreasoning submission to irresponsible authority had been
broken, and the Bible, as the sole record of the religious system of
Christendom, had been made accessible to all in the vulgar tongue, the first
grand step in the wonderful history of European progress may be said to have
been taken. But it was the first step only, for the same spirit of inquiry, the
offspring of doubt, which in questioning the Old had led on to the New,
assailed the new in its turn, and by and by began to ask if what had been been
won were indeed the End and the All? The Tractatus
Theologico-politicus of Benedict de Spinoza was the philosophical answer to
this question, though the work is to be regarded as the result of the writer's
own meditations and inquiries, rather than the embodiment of any peculiar sceptical
or critical temper rife in his time. With the Reformation, indeed, the world
had but transferred its allegiance from one system of dogmatic theology to
another; and though it was no longer necessary to swear fealty to the Church of
Rome, and the individual had come to be reckoned for something in the scheme of
Christian polity, it was still almost as dangerous to indulge in what each
succeeding age never fails to designate as heterodox opinions, and to take
nobler views of God's providence, as it had been in the time of Socrates, of
One much greater than Socrates, of the long array of Christian martyrs, and of
all the persecuted for religious opinion's sake to the present hour. Belonging
essentially to the epoch of its publication, then, the remarkable work of
Spinoza, nevertheless, did not see the light without heralds of its coming; nor
were the minds of scholars and philosophers altogether unprepared for its
appearance, though the newness of the views it proclaimed, and of the
information it imparted, seems to have taken somewhat aback even the most
advanced of these. Copernicus and Galileo, however, had already come into open
collision with the literal text of Scripture and the dicta of dogmatic theology
in the field of physical science, and Bacon and Descartes had successfully
asserted man's right to freedom of opinion in the domain of philosophy.
Spinoza's work, consequently, however ill received by professed theologians,
appears to have met with countenance enough in the world of science and letters.
Copernicus, Luther, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and, though last not
least, Spinoza, — these are the mighty names to whom we owe the intellectual
freedom we now enjoy; Spinoza not least in the illustrious roll, we say, for —
though in arrear as regards political principles of our own great writers and
actors of the time of the first Charles, — as true original of the school of
biblical criticism, he continues to influence the religious opinions of Europe
in a greater degree, perhaps, than any other man of modern times.
In these our own days of freer individual
thought and of greater general enlightenment, when authority and prescription
in matters of faith no less than in subjects of science are ignored by the
truly educated in all classes of society, an English version of the Tractatus
of Spinoza appears to be a want that ought to be supplied. In this favoured
land we have long attained to a salutary conviction of the unmixed advantages
that accrue from the open discussion of political and social questions; but in
regard to subjects of Faith and Religion, it must be confessed that public
opinion is less advanced; the many still fear to meddle here, and from the
pulpit we are anxiously cautioned against too curious inquiry and bidden to
believe. Nevertheless, and in spite of all dissuasion to the contrary, mankind
will inquire; and of late there are unmistakeable signs of greater freedom, and
of some progress in the consideration of the subject of subjects — the
Relations of man to his Creator. A ray of the light that has long illumined the
scholars of Germany and the North has at length broken in upon the stagnant
theological atmosphere of England, and though it has so dazzled our accredited
spiritual chiefs that they now appear disposed to turn their backs upon the
brightness, at the risk even of being left behind by the science and common
intelligence of the country, they will learn to bear it by and by. For England
cannot remain in arrear of the rest of the world in her speculative theology, any
more than she dare lag in science and the mechanical arts. With the happy
constitution of her people she ought rather to lead here, as she has already
led in all that ministers to the material well-being of man, and that
characterizes true civilization — respect for law, regard for the rights of
others, and the assertion of civil and religious liberty. Religion is indeed an
eternal entity in human nature, and outcries against the freest discussion of
its elements, and against inquiry into the worth and authenticity of the
ancient records of the systems that have obtained among the earliest of the
policied races of men, have no meaning in fact but this, — that present
professors incline to be left alone in their faith, whatever it may chance to
be. But as surely as there has been an Old Covenant and a New so
surely will there be another and another newer still, each more than the last
in harmony with the knowledge and the aspirations of ever-advancing humanity.
The terrible Jehovah of the Pentateuch, who exacted as a burnt-offering for
himself every male that opened the womb, whether of man or beast, and whose
altar reeked duly morning and evening with the blood of victims, gave place to
the milder conception of subsequent ages, who "delighted not in the blood
of bullocks or of rams," who "required not from his people their
first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their body for their
sin," but only asked of his worshippers that "they should do justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with their God." The whole of the exclusive
sensuous and blood-stained ritual of the ancient Hebrew people had therefore
yielded to the more humane and spiritual views of the later prophets; and they
in their turn, all in preparing the way for his coming, veiled their heads and
sank into the shade when the culminating point in the religious history of
humanity was attained, and Jesus the son of Joseph appeared upon earth. Our
grand Exemplar and Teacher, however, left not his doctrine to the world in a
comprehensive and absolutely authentic form, dictated by himself, and with the
stamp of his authority upon it; or if he did, the record has perished in the
lapse of ages. His views, his precepts, have to be gathered from imperfect
narratives put together long after the events which they recite had occurred,
by men who often plainly give their own colouring to the matters recorded, and
who seem at times not well to have understood their Teacher. Christ, in fact,
scattered his sayings among curious or careless multitudes. His precepts often
fell upon ears that did not know their meaning. Hence the early dissidence in
the world's estimate of the entire scope of the Christian doctrine, and the
differences in the specific ideas that began to obtain, soon after the death of
Christ. This gives us the assurance that his simple moral doctrine speedily
waned from its pristine brightness, and became mixed and contaminated with the
rites and notions of the Pagan systems with which it necessarily came into such
intimate contact. Many of these ideas and rites indeed belonged to the Jews, in
common with the whole of the policied nations of antiquity, and were therefore
familiar to the earlier Christians as children of Hebrew parents. One of the
most widely spread of all the religious ideas of antiquity was that of
propitiation by sacrifice. An animal — well if it were not a human being! — was
slaughtered upon the altar of the divinity addressed, and in its death was held
to propitiate the Deity and to expiate the sins of the people. Christianity ought
to have escaped this barbarous idea, and doubtless was at first entirely free
from it, though this certainly did not continue for any length of time. The
deliverer whom the Jews had anticipated in their misfortunes was beyond all
question a temporal leader or ruler. Jerusalem was to become the centre of the
empire of the world, and all the nations of the earth were there to bow down
before Jehovah, and to serve the chosen people led by his anointed. But this
new law-giver and victorious leader failing to appear about the time
anticipated, the Christian sect of the Jews by and by came to the conclusion
that it could not have been a deliverer with an arm of flesh who had been
promised by the prophets. They conceived the nobler idea that it was a
spiritual deliverer, one who should set them wholly free from the bondage of
the ceremonial law, now become well-nigh intolerable; and this grand deliverer
a certain number of his countrymen satisfied themselves anon that they
recognized in Jesus, who had emphatically declared his kingdom not to be of
this world. Like all religious reformers, Christ was necessarily obnoxious to
the priesthood of his day, and was, as the New Testament writers tell us, put
to death as a blasphemer and subverter of the law of Moses. Long afterwards —
when several generations had passed away, and this sad, though natural,
conclusion of the religious Reformer's career was growing dim in the distance,
the old Hebrew and Pagan elements began to bear fruit. The pure heart which
Christ had proclaimed, the holy life he had inculcated, were not held
sufficient to make man acceptable to God. The Deity must be propitiated in some
more sensible and striking way; and as the victim in the olden time was chosen
without spot or blemish, and Christ, the pure, the holy, had died in the
assertion of his ennobling principles, what sacrifice so fit as the noblest
form which humanity had yet assumed upon earth, even Christ himself? Christ
therefore was held the sacrifice: he died, and in his death was an offering to
offended Deity for the sins of the people. Hence the doctrine of the Atonement;
and, as a corollary to this, in conformity with uniform and invariable custom,
the Communion. Waxing in their reverence and admiration as time went on
and their numbers increased, and virtually without other guide than blind
feeling and a wonderful tale handed down from sire to son, the followers of
Christ next assumed him to have been not a man, but God. The old heathen gods
had often appeared on earth in human shape — Bacchus, Hercules, &c., — as
instructors and benefactors of mankind; why should not Christ have been an
incarnation of Deity also? He must have been more than man; he was man and he
was God; he was not spiritually or figuratively, but actually, ύιος Θεου, Son
of God, whence the further corruptions derived from Paganism of the miraculous
conception and the virgin mother, with a birth at the winter solstice and a
triumph over death and decay at the vernal equinox. In short, as the life and
doctrines of the Last and Greatest of the Prophets in the course of successive
generations became more and more misunderstood, and more and more mixed up with
Pagan and superstitious ideas, he came at length to differ little in the
popular apprehension from the Nature-god of the heathen world. Well and truly
has it been said by the great writer whose loss we had reason so lately to
deplore, that "Christianity conquered Paganism, but Paganism infected
Christianity; the rites of the Pantheon passed into her worship, and the subtleties
of the Academy into her creed," — a sentence full of meaning to him whose
eyes are unsealed, but without significance to the untutored sight. In what
precedes will be found the key to Macaulay's pregnant words.
It is time that superstitious notions and
Pagan contaminations were discarded from the grand ideal of religion, as it was
undoubtedly conceived by the Author of Christianity, and that mankind escaped
from the labyrinth of unreason in which they are still seen wandering led by
the untutored religious sentiments. The religious sentiments, it should never
be forgotten, are in themselves blind; they require enlightenment by the
intellectual faculties, direction by the moral powers, before their promptings
can conduce to good. They were doubtless intended by a beneficent Creator for
the happiness and ennoblement of mankind; but what misery has been endured,
what crimes have been committed, under their influence and sanctioned by their
award! Intelligence and its offspring, Science, must intervene at length, and
appealing to the ever-extant Revelation which God makes of himself in the mind
lie has furnished us withal, and in the universe around us which we are
privileged to scan, reassert the Absolute
Religion that was taught by Christ, and that does not differ from the
Religion which reason and nature at one, declare alone to be true. Another of
those great religious waves that roll over the world from time to time would
seem to have been long gathering in Europe, and is certainly compact on this occasion
of no new superstition, but rises under the influence of science, of general
enlightenment, and of that refinement in manners wherein true civilization so
essentially consists. Religious philosophers of what are called heterodox
opinions — and of such men the educated world is full — are no enemies to
Religion in itself, and to establishments for the instruction of mankind in
their religious and moral duties. On the contrary, they regard these as means
to an end designed by God, and as essential elements in the social fabric; they
are only hostile to what to them seems unreasonable and objectionable in the
matters taught; they would amend, improve, not pull down or destroy. In the
system of the Church of England rightly used, in especial, they see perhaps the
most admirable instrument ever imagined for the general improvement of mankind.
With their pastors at their head, the various parochial communities of
worshippers in England constitute the Church. In the parish all have a voice in
the administration of their local affairs, as in the estates of the realm in
Parliament assembled the best men among them have a voice through their
representatives in the settlement of the articles of their creed and the ritual
of their worship. The parochial system in which the Church is so principal a
part is the true cradle of our English liberties. The pastor himself, as we now
meet him, at once the gentleman and the scholar — the man of good breeding and
liberal acquirement, the equal of the highest in the social scale, the friend,
the adviser, and the comforter of the lowest, and more than all perhaps in its
humanizing influences, as Head of the Family — as husband and father — he is at
once the centre and the ensample of the civic and domestic virtues, duties, and
affections — the very core of all that most endears man to the world, and the
world in its greenness and loveliness to mankind. England had need beware how
in suffering a narrow theology to be forced upon her she indisposes her best
intellects and highest moral natures from seeking admission into her ministry;
men who cannot get the better of doubts and difficulties by "taking a
curacy;"[2] nor, by higher preferments, i.e. by richer bribes,
be kept from apostatizing to the effete and supersensuous Church of Rome.[3] Credulity and mystery have lost their hold upon the
educated mind of the 19th century, and he who has made any progress in
reasonable, as distinguished from dogmatic, religion finds no satisfaction for
the aspirations of his spirit towards the Infinite in ritual observance, in parrot-like
iteration of set formulae, and in a mendacious prostration of his moral sense
and understanding in terms that make God a tyrant and man a slave. If matters
are unhappily pushed to extremity by the narrow-minded among her overseers
(επίκοποι) there must needs occur a rent in the fair fabric of the English
Church; but the secession here, should it come to pass, will not have the
effect of that which took place so lately in a neighbouring country, — to rivet
the fetters of superstition more firmly than ever on the soul. In our Father's
house are many mansions; in the constitution of the human mind there is endless
variety; but all, with the most diverse speculative views, may meet on .the
common ground of reason, justice, and charity. God
the creator, ordering, ruling, from eternity, by laws harmonious and
unchanging; Christ coming into the
world in time, the example and the teacher of mankind; Love of God, which means obedience to
his eternal decrees on the one hand, and Neighbourly
Love, which means doing as we would be done by on the other; to which
let us add a Sense of Accountability for deeds done here, and the Hope
of Immortality hereafter — and we have the essential elements of a truly
Catholic faith.[4] Speculative opinions have little
influence on action, beliefs have still less. Some of the best and most gifted
men the world has ever seen have had a very small measure of believingness in
their nature, yet have they lived beloved by their friends, and have often made
mankind their debtors to the end of time by the noble works they have left
behind them. And, again, it is notorious that the zealous and perfectly sincere
professor — to say nothing of crimes of far deeper dye perpetrated by the
fanatic — the perfectly sincere professor, we say, has occasionally been proved
the spoiler of the widow and the orphan confided to his care, the forger of
deeds that made innocent children beggars, the selfish sybarite who consumed in
sensual indulgence the hard-won earnings of the labouring poor. It is time that
another test of human worth were appealed to, besides religious profession; and
especially that men of letters and good breeding should cease bespattering
those who differ from them in their speculative theology with such epithets as
infidel and atheist.
The path entered upon at the glorious
Reformation, in short, cannot now be quitted, neither may we loiter on the way.
Forward, ever forward, without hurry, but without pause,[5]
is the motto inscribed in letters of light on the modern banner. Infallibility
and dogmatism are no more; scientific truth associated with reason, justice,
and charity must henceforth point the way, and it were wilful mistrust of the
Almighty to question the wholesomeness of the conclusions to which they will
lead, however these may clash with preconceived opinion and particular
interest. Our science is not that of the Jews of the days of Moses and Joshua,
it is not the science of our fathers, nor even of yesterday, but ever
progressive, ever extending, ever becoming more precise, each and all of its
parts are seen arranging themselves in their several places, as elements of one
vast and harmonious whole, overruled by eternal and unchanging laws, the
ordinances of the Almighty and all-comprehending God who is their Author. Shall
not the religious elements in our nature dovetail with the rest of our
wonderful economy; our sensational be worthy of our scientific conceptions of
God and the universe? The day has long gone by for assuming that man can only
be religious according to the Hebrew Scriptures. Religion is a thing apart from
parchment, ink, and paper, and the Hebrew Scriptures, themselves but evidences
of the existence of a certain order of primitive faculties in the mind of man,
are neither the only nor yet the oldest records of a religious system extant.
The Hindoos preceded the Hebrews in civilization by hundreds, perchance by
thousands, of years, and in their Vedas, which existed in writing centuries
before the Jews became serfs to Egyptian task-masters, they have not only given
us a clear insight into their religious world, but have actually transmitted
the record of this in the tongue which is the root of all the dialects spoken
in Europe to the present day. It might have been that the Sanscrit Vedas had
descended to us as our especial religious inheritance, when we should have had
Brahm, Vichnou, and Siva, as our triune divinity. The Zends, again, the
religious books of the ancient Persians, are of great antiquity; and as the
Persians were nearer neighbours of the Jews than the Hindoos, so do we find
that they have influenced Jewish ideas in a much greater measure. We now see
very clearly the Zoroastrian idea that is the foundation of the Book of Job. —
But we must not be tempted to pursue this line of reflection any further; the
field that opens up before us is all but limitless.[6]
Spinoza, whose work it is our present
business to introduce to the reader, like all the great thinkers of the world,
was much in advance of his age; and, almost as matter of course, was persecuted
by that section of his contemporaries who only felt an interest in having
things remain as they were. He made himself especially obnoxious to the
narrow-minded among the religious community to which by birth he belonged, but
which on attaining to manhood he forsook — the Jews; and, intolerance and
fanaticism having still the upper-hand in human affairs, there is perhaps no
name to which the odium theologicum has so pertinaciously clung as to that of
Spinoza. He by whom the conception of Deity is declared to be the foundation of
all knowledge, of all mental capacity to know, who sees God in everything, and
maintains that without God there were nothing, is nevertheless charged with the
folly of atheism. He who held the love of God and rapt contemplation of the
Infinite to be the chief joy and privilege of existence, is familiarly spoken
of as a man without piety! And he who led a life of saint-like purity, despising
the wealth and honours that were within his easy reach, is denounced as a
heartless and avaricious impostor! Time has already, however, in a great
measure righted the memory of Benedict de Spinoza. To many of the great in
intellect, of Germany especially, Spinoza has now for some time been better
known, and is at length regarded with feelings of entire respect, even where
his peculiar views do not command assent. God, as conceived by Spinoza, has
indeed been the Divinity of many of the most distinguished in letters and
science of the middle and north of Europe since his day. Lessing, the great
scholar, critic, and poet of his age, holding up the works of Spinoza in his
hands, exclaimed to his distinguished contemporary Jacobi on a certain
occasion, Εν Και παν! — behold the sum and substance of philosophy.
Goethe, to the end of his long life, was in the habit of seeking refuge and
refreshment from other studies in "The Ethics." Herder used to wish
he could for once find Goethe engaged with another book than the Ethics, and
Goethe himself, in one of the pleasantest of his works — "The Fact and
Fiction of my Life (Aus meinem Leben Dichtung und Wahrheit)" — expands
with delight over the remembrance of the new world that was awakened in his
mind by the study of this work. Novalis, another of Germany's great writers, is
in raptures with the "Divine Nature," as portrayed by the traduced
Spinoza; and Schleiermacher, the eloquent preacher, in his enthusiasm, upon a
certain occasion exclaimed from the pulpit to his astonished auditory, —
"Sacrifice with me a lock of hair to the manes of the pure and
misunderstood Spinoza. The sublime spirit of the Universe filled his soul; the
Infinite was his beginning and his end; the Universal his sole and eternal
love. Living in saintly innocence and in deep humility, he viewed his being in
the glass of everlasting nature, and knew that he too reflected something that
was not unworthy to be loved. Full of religion, full of the Holy Spirit, he
appears to us as dwelling apart from the world, raised above the vulgar and
master in his art, but without disciples or a school."
Spinoza has therefore had his fervid admirers
among the learned and eloquent men of Europe; but he has not been fortunate in
finding apologetic or admiring biographers; and the greatest critic and
dialectician of the 17th century, Bayle, has not only shown himself
unmitigatedly hostile to the philosophy of Spinoza, but cold and hardly just to
the philosopher himself. To Bayle, indeed, may be traced the frequent, though
by no means universal, disfavour among the learned in which the name of Spinoza
was so long held.[7] The Pastor Colerus, whose Life
of our author is best known, was personally acquainted with him; and though
there are doubtless some points which a thorough admirer would have seen
through a different medium, the blameless life, the gentle and really
attractive character of the man are made sufficiently to appear. It is not
difficult for us to excuse in the Lutheran minister a spice of splenetic
feeling against so bold a thinker as Spinoza — the theologian could not away
with the uncompromising critic of the Hebrew Scriptures — but he has evidently
no dislike of the man. It is with much regret that we discover a different
spirit in a quarter where we should not have looked for such a manifestation,
in the last and certainly one of the most able of the translators and editors
of Spinoza, M. E. Saisset. In a learned and instructive article on the
Philosophy of the Jews and Arabians, lately published (vide Revue des deux
Mondes, Janv. 15me 1862), M. Saisset has been strangely led away by
his dislike of Pantheism and other points in the philosophy of Spinoza, to
attempt to degrade him from the place he assuredly holds in the world both of
intellect and of morals. For our own part, we have no more affection for
Pantheism than M. Saisset; neither do we care to ship in the brain-built bark
that carries Spinoza's metaphysical freight; but looking simply to truth, and
careless of consequence, we are bound to aver that in all we can make out of
the man Spinoza in his works, in his letters, in the character he bore when
alive, and the social position of those who were his friends, we discover
nothing that is not great intellectually, good, gentle, and loveable morally.
And yet, strangely as it seems to us, this is the man of whom M. Saisset speaks
disparagingly, as a heartless recluse and a merely selfish dreamer. Spinoza
very certainly was neither one nor other. He was much rather one of nature's
own nobility, great intellectually, and as self-reliant and independent, as he
was courteous, considerate, and generous.
Spinoza's writings are extremely rare in
England. His name does not even occur in the catalogue of some of our greatest
libraries. His works have nevertheless been several times reprinted in the
original Latin in Germany, and there are translations by competent hands into
both French and German. That by Herr Berthold Auerbach[8]
into German is extremely faithful, and is preceded by a good Life of the
author; and M. Emilius Saisset's French version, which has now reached a second
edition,[9] has the great merit of being both
accurate and readable. It further contains Coleras' Life of the Philosopher,
and an able exposition of his doctrines from the pen of M. Saisset himself.
Spinoza in his life-time published the
following works: — 1. Renati Descartes principia philosophiæ; cujus accesserunt
cogitata metaphysica. Amstelodami, 1663. 2. Tractatus Theologico-politicus
continens dissertationes aliquot, quibus ostenditur libertatem philosophandi
non tantum salva piotate et republicæ pace posse concedi, sed eandem nisi cum
pace republicæ ipsaque pietate tolli non posse, 4to. Hamburgi 1670. 3. After
his death were published under the superintendence of his friends Louis Meyer
and Jarig Jellis, under the general title of B. de Spinoza Opera Posthuma, the Ethica,
Spinoza's great philosophical work; a short political treatise entitled Tractatus
Politlcus; another short essay, De Emendatione Intellectus; a Compendium
Grammatices Linguæ Hebraicæ; and a selection of Letters to and from
friends and correspondents, fol. Amst. 1677.
Besides these works it is known that Spinoza
at one time occupied himself with a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into
Latin; and if the versions which follow the Hebrew texts quoted in the Tr.
Theol.-polit. are from his pen, it is much to be regretted that ho himself,
shortly before his death, committed this work to the flames.
For the translation of the Tractatus
Theologico-politicus now given to the English reader, the writer makes
beforehand every apology that can be admitted. Many years had elapsed since he
first read the work in the original Latin, but his attention was recalled to it
lately, first by Bunsen's Biblical Criticisms, and then by Essays and Reviews,
in which he seemed to meet with many things that were already familiar to him
in the Tractatus. For occupation in an enforced solitude, and to bring the subject
nearer to his mind, he began a translation of the chapter on Miracles, the
subject there treated being one that seemed particularly to engage the public
attention, and the work once entered on was found so attractive that it
proceeded pretty regularly until completed. For his own part, the writer is
ready to avow that his task has been both interesting and edifying; and as all
the better spirits of the world are now of opinion that a moral bed of
Procrustes is even as sorry an idea as the original contrivance was cruel, he
trusts that generally they will bear him out in his estimate of the worth of
Spinoza's short but masterly work.
Spinoza himself informs us in his preface
that he wrote only for the liberal-minded and the lettered. He had indeed a
great contempt for the vulgar, and did not care that any one unacquainted with
the learned languages should be able to peruse his work. But in the course of
two centuries the world has advanced in its notions of what constitutes real
vulgarity and true learning, and has decided that neither one nor other
necessarily inheres in the possession or in the want of Greek and Latin. The
despot and the bigot, the advocate of popular ignorance and superstition, alone
begrudge their freedom whether of thought or action to mankind. But freedom of
thought and the vernacular are inseparable, and are even as necessary to human
progress as is the light of the sun to the life of the world. In the present
day we have no misgivings of the inestimable advantages of free discussion in
terms accessible to all. The light only puts out the dark; it is dreaded by
none but those who have selfish ends to serve, or who are possessed by unworthy
fears of their fellow men.
Notes
1.For the original
title in extenso vide p. 16.
2.Vide Life of Dr
Arnold.
3.Vide Report of a
parley between a certain Bishop and the late Prince Albert, in the Examiner
Newspaper of Dec. 21st, 1861.
4.The grounds of a
universal religion are admirably given, and at greater length, by our author in
chapter xiv. — Ed.
5.Ohne Hast, aber
ohne Rast; Goethe's motto, with a sun in the centre as cognizance.
6.The existence of
the ancient sacred books referred to above could not have been known to
Spinoza, though the learned Thomas Hyde must have been engaged upon his great
work, the "Veterum Persarum et Medorum Religionis Historia," in his
day. The religious literature of India is the discovery of the latter half of
the last century only, a field in which Sir Wm. Jones, H. T. Colebrooke, M.A.,
Anquetil de Perron, and others, have made the world their debtors for ever.
Spinoza expresses his wish for some authentic proof that the Book of Job was
written by a Gentile, as we should then be certain, he says, that Gentile
nations had their religious books as well as the Jews.
The reader who is anxious for information on the History and Progress of the Religious Idea among mankind is referred with confidence to the noble work of Creuzer and Guigniaut, "Histoire des Religions d'Antiquité," (4 vols. 8vo, Paris). Save in a single direction which is not entered on, this work exhausts the subject. It is a grand monument both of learning and industry. The omission noticed — the Hebrew system — has lately been most ably supplied by an English scholar of the highest attainments, Mr R. W. Mackay, whose masterly work on the Progress of the Intellect, in connection with the religious idea among the Greeks and Hebrews, will be read with pleasure by every lover of learning and good taste, and with an eye and an ear for sterling English.
The reader who is anxious for information on the History and Progress of the Religious Idea among mankind is referred with confidence to the noble work of Creuzer and Guigniaut, "Histoire des Religions d'Antiquité," (4 vols. 8vo, Paris). Save in a single direction which is not entered on, this work exhausts the subject. It is a grand monument both of learning and industry. The omission noticed — the Hebrew system — has lately been most ably supplied by an English scholar of the highest attainments, Mr R. W. Mackay, whose masterly work on the Progress of the Intellect, in connection with the religious idea among the Greeks and Hebrews, will be read with pleasure by every lover of learning and good taste, and with an eye and an ear for sterling English.
7.Dictionary, sub voce
Spinoza.
8.B. von Spinoza's
sämmtliche 'Werke, 5 Bde., 12mo, Stuttgart, 1841.
9.Œuvres de
Spinoza, 2 Tom. 12mo, Paris, 1842. 2me Ed. 3 Tom. 12mo, Paris, 1862.
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