Spinoza

Front matter

EDITED BY

WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

Introduction

A great system of philosophy is exposed to that kind of injustice which arises from the multiplicity of its interpreters, and from the fact that these interpreters are apt to contemplate and criticise it, not from the point of view of its author, but from their own. Critics and commentators of different schools and shades of opinion are naturally desirous to claim for their own views the sanction of a great writer's name, and unconsciously exercise their ingenuity in forcing that sanction when it is not spontaneously yielded. If any ambiguities or inconsistencies lurk in his doctrines, they are sure to be brought to light and exaggerated by the tendency of conflicting schools to fasten on what is most in accordance with their own special principles. And even when a writer is on the whole self-consistent, it is possible for a one-sided expositor so to arrange the lights and shadows, so to give prominence to what is incidental and throw into the shade what is essential, as to make him the advocate of ideas really antagonistic to his own.

More, perhaps, than most systems of philosophy, that of Spinoza has been subjected to this sort of misconstruction. Doctrines the most diversified and contradictory have been extracted from it. Pantheism and atheism, idealism and empiricism, nominalism and realism, a non-theistic naturalism as uncompromising as that of the modern evolutionist, and a supernaturalism or acosmism which makes as little of the world as the Maya of the Buddhist—have all alike found a colourable sanction in Spinoza's teaching. A philosophy apparently as exact and logically coherent as the Geometry of Euclid or the Principia of Newton, has proved, in the hands of modern interpreters, as enigmatical as the utterances of the Jewish Kabbala or the mystical theosophy of the Neo-Platonists. To the vision of one observer, it is so pervaded and dominated by the idea of the Infinite, that he can describe its author only as "a God-intoxicated man." To the acute inspection of another, the theistic element in it is only the decorous guise of a scientific empiricism—a judicious but unmeaning concession to the theological prejudices of the author's time, or an incongruous dress of medieval scholasticism of which he had not been able wholly to divest himself.

Whilst some at least of those heterogeneous notions which have been fathered on Spinoza have no other origin than the mistakes of his modern critics, there are, it must be acknowledged, others which indicate real inconsistencies. It is true, indeed, that the controversies of subsequent times may easily read into the language of an early writer decisions on questions of which he knew nothing. "Philosophers of an earlier age," it has been said, "often contain, in a kind of implicit unity, different aspects or elements of truth, which in a subsequent time become distinguished from and opposed to each other." They make use, in a general and indeterminate way, of terms which later controversies have stamped with a special significance; they may thus seem to answer questions which they never put to themselves, and may easily be got to pronounce seemingly inconsistent opinions on problems which they never thought of solving. The eager controversialist catches at his pet phrase or mot d'ordre, and hastily concludes that the old writer speaks in the distinctive tone of the modern polemic. But obviously the inconsistencies which thus arise are inconsistencies only to the ear. It may be possible to get Spinoza to side in appearance with the modern evolutionist or with the modern spiritualist, to make him an individualist after the fashion of Mill or Spencer, or a universalist who speaks by anticipation with the voice of Schelling. But if such attempts are made, they are mere philosophical anachronisms. The problems which they seem to solve are problems which, when the supposed solutions were given, could not even be propounded.

Yet it is impossible to ascribe the discordancy of Spinoza's modern interpreters only to the necessary ambiguity of their author's language. His philosophy is not a completely homogeneous product. It may rather be said to be the composite result of conflicting tendencies, neither of which is followed out to its utmost logical results. If we say in general terms that philosophy is the search for unity, the effort of thought to gain a point of view from which the contrast variously expressed by the terms the One and the Many, the Uni- versal and the Individual, the Infinite and the Finite, God and the World, shall be reconciled and harmonised, then we shall look in vain, in the philosophy of Spinoza, for one consistent solution of the problem. No solution can be regarded as satisfactory which suppresses or fails to do justice to either of the extremes, or which, though giving alternate expression to both, leaves them still in merely external combination without being reconciled for thought. Yet, at most, the latter result is all that the philosophy of Spinoza can be said to achieve. There are parts of his system—such as the reduction of all finite individuals to modes or accidents of the absolute substance, and the assertion that all determination is negation—in which the idea of the infinite is so emphasised as to leave no place for the finite, or to reduce nature and man, all individual existences, to unreality and illusion. There are parts of his system, on the other hand—such as his assertion that the individual is the real, his ascription to each finite thing of a conatus in suo esse perseverandi, his rejection of general ideas as mere entia rationis, his polemic against teleology, his use of the term "Nature" as a synonym for "God"—which seem to give to the finite an independent reality that leaves no room for the infinite, or reduces it to an expression for the aggregate of finite things. Thus the system of Spinoza contains elements which resist any attempt to classify him either as a pantheist or an atheist, a naturalist or supernaturalist, a nominalist or a realist. As he approaches the problem with which he deals from different sides, the opposite tendencies by which his mind is governed seem to receive alternate expression; but to the last they remain side by side, with no apparent con- sciousness of their disharmony, and with no attempt to mediate between them.

But though it may be conceded that the philosophy of Spinoza is not self-consistent, or contains elements which, if not irreconcilable, are unreconciled, it does not follow that the task of the expositor of Spinoza is limited to what is involved in this concession. Inconsistency may arise not so much from incompatible principles as from defective logic. Contradictory elements may have been admitted into a system, not because its author looked at things from different and irreconcilable standpoints, but because he failed to see all that his fundamental standpoint involved; not because he started from different premisses, but because he did not carry out what was for him the only true premiss to its legitimate results. As moral defects assume an altogether different aspect according as they are regarded as the expression of a retrograding or of an advancing moral nature—as willing divergences or as involuntary shortcomings from its own ideal—so intellectual inconsistencies may mean more or less according to the attitude of the mind from which they proceed. It may be possible to discover, through all a man's thoughts, a dominant idea or general tendency, and to explain his inconsistencies as only unconscious aberrations from it. It may even be possible to discern, underneath apparent contradictions or abrupt transitions from one point of view to another, an implicit unity of aim the guidance of thought by an unconscious logic towards a principle of reconciliation not yet fully grasped. And if any such dominant idea or implicit aimu can be detected in a great writer, it cannot fail to throw light on the general character and bearing of his speculations, and it may enable us to pronounce whether and to what extent in his seeming inconsistencies he is only unfaithful to himself, or inadequately representing his own idea.

Now there are various conceivable indications by which we may be aided in detecting this undercurrent of tendency in the mind of a philosophical writer. We may be able, for instance, to learn something of the motive of his speculations—to discover in his previous spiritual history what it was that constituted for him, so to speak, the original impulse towards philosophy, and that secretly guided the process by which intellectual satisfaction has been sought. Or again, we may know something of the helps which have been afforded him in the search for truth, of the studies on which his opening intelligence has been fed, of the sources from which he has derived inspiration, of the books or authorities which consciously or unconsciously have moulded the substance or form of his thoughts. Or finally, we may have the means of viewing his system in the making, of watching the working of his mind and the development of his ideas from their earlier and cruder shape to the form which they have finally taken. We may be able thus to see which, if any, of the conflicting elements in his thought has gradually tended to prevail over the others, and to which of them therefore, though the victory to the last may be incomplete, the place of the ruling or characteristic principle must be ascribed. We may find it possible in this way to pronounce of the blots which disfigure his system in its final form, that they are not radical inconsistencies, but only irrelevances or excrescences foreign to its essential character.

Now we are not without such helps to the understanding of the Spinozistic philosophy. In the first place, we possess in the preface to the treatise 'Concerning the Improvement of the Understanding' an autobiographical fragment in which Spinoza narrates what may be termed the origin and development of his spiritual life, and from which we gain a clear insight into the motive and genesis of his philosophical system. In the second place, we have information, direct and indirect, as to Spinoza's early studies in philosophy. From his own testimony, from the internal evidence supplied by his writings, and from other sources, we know something as to the authors he had read, the intellectual atmosphere in which he grew up, the authorities which may have influenced the formation of his opinions. Lastly, we have in Spinoza's earlier works the means of tracing the gradual development of those ideas which took their final systematised form in the 'Ethics.' Especially in the 'Treatise concerning God and Man,' which has been brought to light only in our own time, we possess what may be regarded as an early study for the 'Ethics,' embracing the same subjects and dealing with the same fundamental ideas, but presenting them in a cruder and less coherent form, and exhibiting the conflicting tendencies of the later work in harder and more unmodified opposition to each other. From these various sources some help may be derived towards the right apprehension of Spinoza's philosophy and the explanation of its apparent ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

THE ETHICAL MOTIVE OF SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY—THE TREATISE 'CONCERNING THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.'

The impulse towards philosophy was not in Spinoza's mind a purely intellectual one. His philosophy is the logical sequel to that of Descartes, but the Cartesian philosophy only supplied or suggested a dialectic for convictions that were the independent growth of his own moral and spiritual experience. He was prompted to seek after a method of knowledge because primarily he sought after spiritual rest. It was the consciousness that the dissatisfaction and disquietude which the ordinary desires and passions engender had their ultimate source in a false view of the world—in other words, that the contemplation of the world from the point of view of the senses and the imagination bred only perturbation and unrest—which led him to ask himself whether that point of view is not an illusory one, and whether it is possible to penetrate beneath the shows of things to their hidden essence. Nor is this account of the origin of Spinoza's philosophy a mere conjecture. The introduction to the unfinished treatise above named is, as we have said, a kind of spiritual autobiography, in which the author explains to us what were the moral difficulties and aspirations in which his speculative inquiries originated. He tells us what is the view of the true end and goal of human existence to which his own experience had led him, and he points out the means by which he conceived that that end could be attained. His philosophy took its rise, he tells us, not primarily in the search for intellectual satisfaction, but in the endeavour to discover some true and abiding object of love, something in finding which he would find a perfect and eternal joy—a joy which could not be found in the ordinary objects of human desire—in riches, honour, the pleasures of appetite and sense. All these objects experience proved to be deceptive and inconstant, difficult and uncertain of attainment, and when attained bringing only disappointment and disquietude.

"Our happiness," he says, "depends entirely on the quality of the objects to which we are attached by love. For, on account of that which is not loved, no strifes will ever arise, no sorrow if it perishes, no envy if others possess it, no fear, no hatred, no perturbation of mind—all of which come upon us in the love of things which are perishable, as are all those things of which we have spoken. But love to a thing which is eternal and infinite feeds the mind only with joy—a joy that is unmingled with any sorrow; that therefore we should eagerly desire and with all our strength seek to obtain."

The end of all human endeavour, therefore—that in which consists the perfection and blessedness of our nature—is union by love with an infinite and eternal object. But love, according to Spinoza, rests on knowledge; or rather there is a point of view in which, for him, feeling and intelligence, knowing and being, are identified. The sure and only way to attain the end we seek is to know things as they really are, to disabuse our minds of error and illusion; and for this purpose what is chiefly needed is a discipline of the intelligence, "a method," as he expresses it, "of curing the understanding and of so purifying it that it may know things as well as possible and without error." But all knowledge, he repeats, has a value for him only as it is directed to one end and goal—viz., the attainment of that highest human perfection of which he had spoken—and everything in the sciences which does not bring us nearer to that end he will reject as useless. The task, therefore, which in this treatise he proposes to himself is the devising, not of a method of knowledge or organon of the sciences in general, but of a means of attaining that kind of knowledge, or of apprehending all things in that aspect of them, which will lead to the attainment of moral and spiritual perfection.

It is unnecessary, for our present purpose, to follow out in detail the successive steps by which Spinoza works out his conception of the true method of knowledge. The general drift of the treatise may be said to be this,—to set before us an ideal of true knowledge, and to point out the way in which that ideal is to be realised. In contrast with the kind of knowledge which constitutes the content of our ordinary unreflecting experience, that knowledge which can be said to be real and adequate must be intuitive or self-evidencing; it must apprehend its objects in their unity or their rela- tion to each other as parts of one absolute whole; and it must see them in their right order, or in their relation to the first principle of knowledge, so that the order of our thoughts shall "correspond to the exemplar of nature," or represent the real order of things. The knowledge of the ordinary, unreflecting consciousness is, in the first place, merely second-hand and unintelligent, it is derived from hearsay, or from loose and unsifted experience. True knowledge, in contrast with this, must be that in which the mind is in immediate relation to its object, in which truth is seen in its own light, or, as Spinoza expresses it, "in which a thing is perceived solely from its own essence, or from the knowledge of its proximate cause." Ordinary knowledge, again, is disconnected and fragmentary, it looks at things apart from each other, or in the accidental order in which they are presented to the common observer of nature, or connected with each other only by arbitrary associations. In contrast with this, true knowledge is that which breaks down the false isolation and independence which popular imagination gives to individual objects; it regards the universe as a whole, in which no object exists for itself, or can be understood save in its relations to other objects and to the whole. It discerns, or seeks to discern, the real relations of things, or what is the same, the rational relations of the ideas of things; and therefore it is fatal to all such connections or combinations of ideas as rest on accident or arbitrary association. For the same reason, lastly, true knowledge is that which not only sees its objects as related to each other, but sees them in that definite relation of ordered sequence which is determined ultimately by the first principle out of which they spring. There are certain ideas on which other ideas rest. Spinoza rejects the "universals" of scholastic metaphysic as mere entia rationis or fictions of the imagination. Yet we are not left to the impossible task of attempting to collect or string together in thought the infinite multiplicity of finite and changeable things. There are certain ideas which come to us in the place of universals, and which gather up our knowledge into that unity which by means of the fictitious universals was sought after. "There are," he tells us in language the precise significance of which we cannot at present examine, certain "fixed and eternal things, which, though they are individual, yet on account of their omnipresence and all-comprehending power become to us as universals, or as genera in the definitions of individual changeable things, and as the proximate causes of all things." Finally, there is one highest idea, that of "the most perfect Being," which is the source and explanation of all other ideas, as it represents the source and origin of all things. That knowledge therefore alone can be termed adequate which proceeds from and is moulded by this supreme or central idea. "That our mind," says he, "may thoroughly reflect the exemplar of nature, it must evolve all ideas from that which represents the origin and source of all nature, so that that idea may appear to be the source of all other ideas."

Such, then, is Spinoza's theory of knowledge; how is it to be reduced to practice? What, in other words, is the true method of knowledge? What Spinoza says in answer to this question in the present treatise amounts to little more than this, that we should endeavour to become possessed of what he calls "true ideas," and that we should by means of the highest of all ideas seek to reduce them to unity, or endeavour "so to order and concatenate our ideas that our mind shall represent objectively (i.e., in thought) the formality (i.e., objective reality) of nature, both as to the whole and as to its parts."

Spinoza does not atttempt here to investigate the relation of mind to nature, of thought to its object. He assumes that a true idea is something different from its object, the idea of a circle from an actual circle, the idea of the body from the body itself: but he takes for granted that the former agrees with or adequately represents the latter. To verify a true idea we need not go beyond itself. "Certitude is nothing but the objective essence (the idea) itself; the way in which we perceive the formal essence is itself certitude." We may, indeed, have a reflex knowledge of our ideas—make one idea the object of a second idea, or, in modern phraseology, be not only conscious but self-conscious. Yet, in order to the attainment of knowledge, it is no more necessary to know that we know, than, in order to know the essence of a triangle, it is necessary to know the essence of a circle. But though it is possible to have true ideas without reflecting on them, and even to reason correctly without a knowledge of logic or the principles of reasoning—ideas, both in, themselves and in their relations, being their own evidence—yet this does not hinder that, for lack of reflection and by reason of various prejudices, people often mistake error for truth and go wrong in their reasoning, so that "it seldom happens that in the inves- tigation of nature they proceed in proper order." Hence arises the need for method, "which is nothing but reflected knowledge or the idea of the idea."

What this means is that we do not need to go outside of thought in search of a criterion of truth, inasmuch as this would virtually be the demand to excogitate a method of thought before we begin to think, to learn to swim before we go into the water. We cannot criticise the forms of thought without using them. Ideas must, so to speak, criticise themselves. In reflecting on them, making them objects of consciousness, they determine their own nature and limits, and so become capable of being used as the instruments of further knowledge.

"True ideas," Spinoza says, constitute themselves "the inborn instruments of knowledge" which the understanding makes for itself by its own native force. Having grasped a true idea, we have only to direct the mind's operations so as to make the given true idea "a norm according to which we shall understand all things." Method, in short, consists in bringing ideas to self-consciousness, and then in using them as the principles of investigation. Having a true idea—such as, e.g., that of Causality—you become conscious of it, understand and define it; and thenceforward it is no longer used at random, unintelligently, but becomes a principle of method or a guide in future inquiries. Knowledge thus acquired will possess, so far, the characteristics which have been laid down as constituting the ideal of knowledge; it will rest on ideas or principles which are their own evidence, and it will, instead of a mere collection or combination of things arbitrarily associated, consist of parts related to each other by links of reason or necessary thought.

But there is a further and more important element which method must include ere it can be adequate to the whole field of knowledge. Knowledge must remain imperfect until we can contemplate all things from the point of view of their absolute unity. True ideas may serve as provisional instruments of thought; but their main use is that we may, like a workman who uses ruder implements to construct more perfect ones, fashion by means of them "other intellectual instruments, by which the mind acquires a farther power of investigation, and so proceeds till it gradually attains the summit of wisdom." Each true idea, Spinoza seems to teach, furnishes us with a term of thought which serves so far to correct the false independence which imagination gives to individual objects; but that idea itself needs to have its individuality dissolved in a higher conception. As all things in nature "have commerce with each other, i.e., are produced by and produce others"—are, in other words, reciprocally causes and effects—so each idea or term of thought is only a focus of relations, a transition point in a systematic whole; and ideas rise in importance according as they extend over a wider portion of the realm of knowledge. But if this be so, that knowledge must still be imperfect which stops short of the highest and most comprehensive idea in this intellectual hierarchy. Not only must individual objects yield up their false independence, but ideas themselves must surrender in succession their isolated authority, until we reach that which is "the fountain and source of all other ideas"—the idea, as Spinoza terms it, of "the most perfect Being."

"That method will be good which shows how the mind is to be directed according to the norm of a given true idea. Moreover, since the relation between two ideas is the same with the relation between the formal essences (objects) of these ideas, it follows that that reflective knowledge, which is that of the idea of the most perfect Being, will be more excellent than the reflective knowledge of other ideas; that is, that method will be the most perfect which shows how the mind is to be directed according to the norm of the given idea of the most perfect Being."

"If we proceed as little as possible abstractly, and begin as soon as possible with the first elements—i.e., with the source and origin of nature—we need not fear deception. … No confusion is to be apprehended in regard to the idea of it (the origin of nature), if only we have the norm of truth, as already shown. For this is a Being single, infinite—i.e., all being, and beyond which there is no being."

"As regards order," again Spinoza writes, "and that we may arrange and unite all our perceptions, it is required that, as soon as it can be done and reason demands, we inquire whether there is any being, and, at the same time, of what sort, which is the cause of all things, as its objective essence is also the cause of all our ideas; and then will our mind, as we have said, reproduce nature as completely as possible; for it will contain objectively both its essence and its order and unity."

What then, the question arises, are we to understand by this "most perfect Being," "Being, single, infinite, all-embracing," the idea of which constitutes, according to Spinoza, the first principle of knowledge? Is it something above nature, outside of the cosmos of finite things and relations, though itself the source or cause of all things? Or is it, though the highest, only one of the elements which constitute nature, the first principle of the system of related phenomena, but itself essentially part of that system? Or again, is it only a synonym for Nature, the totality of individual things and beings, and is this identification of nature with "the most perfect Being" merely a concession to theological prejudices, whilst really nothing more is meant than that the universe is to be conceived of as an ordered system of things?

According to one of the ablest of Spinoza's recent expositors, "the idea of the most perfect Being includes, if it is not equivalent to, the belief that the whole of nature is one and uniform," which belief is "the very first principle of science." "In knowing the 'most perfect Being, he adds, "the mind also knows itself as part of the universal order and at one with it, therein finding, as we have to learn elsewhere, the secret of man's happiness and freedom. What more Spinoza may have meant is doubtful, that he meant this much is certain." Spinoza, he further explains, whilst "attached by an intellectual passion to the pursuit of exact science," was also "attached by race and tradition to the Hebrew sentiment of a one and only Supreme Power;" and in this he seems to find the explanation of the fact that Spinoza clothed the purely scientific idea of the unity and uniformity of nature in the theological guise of "the most perfect Being." Spinoza, he tells us, "follows in form and even in language the examples made familiar by theologians and philosophers under theological influence and pressure, who had undertaken to prove the existence of a being apart from and above the universe. He does not simply break off from theological speculation, and seek to establish philosophy on an independent footing; he seems intent on showing that theological speculation itself, when reason is once allowed free play, must at last purge itself of all anthropomorphism and come round to the scientific view. Spinoza does not ignore theology, but provides an euthanasia for it." Many of Spinoza's other modern interpreters have convinced themselves on various grounds that Spinoza's system is one of pure naturalism. that his highest principle does not go beyond the conception of an all-embracing, all-dominating, but unconscious nature-force, and that we should not misconstrue him if we substituted the word "Nature" for "God," wherever the latter occurs in his philosophy.

It cannot, we think, be questioned that the view taken by these writers is so far true that in Spinoza's system "theological speculation has," in Mr Pollock's graphic phrase, "purged itself of anthropomorphism." Spinoza's God is certainly not the supramundane potentate or "magnified man" of popular thought, or even the "all-wise Creator and Governor" of natural theology. Whatever else the idea of "the most perfect Being" means, it is an idea which is supposed to constitute a principle, and the highest principle, of knowledge—at once its own evidence and the evidence or explanation of the whole finite world. But an outside Creator or Contriver is a notion which explains nothing. Not only does it reduce the God who is placed outside the world to something finite, but it is essentially dualistic. The link between God and the world, according to this notion, is a purely arbitrary one. To find in God the explanation of the world implies that the existence of the world and all that is in it is traceable to something in the nature of God, and not to His mere arbitrary will or power. A cause which thought can recognise as such is one which contains in it the reason and necessity of the effect, and which reveals itself in the effect. But a personified cause, which of its mere will produces an effect it might have refrained from producing, is an impossible conception. In such a conception cause and effect stand apart, and the gap is not filled up for thought by the interposition of an arbitrary, omnipotent will. To find in God the first principle of all being and of all knowledge implies a relation between the principle and that which flows from it—between God and the world—such that, in one point of view, God would not be God without it; and on the other hand, the world would not be what it is, would be reduced to unreality or nonentity, without God. Now this, as we have seen, is what Spinoza does, or attempts to do. The "most perfect Being," whatever else the phrase means, is a Being the idea of which is the first principle of knowledge, the key to the meaning of the whole system of being. Without this central principle, finite things and beings have no existence other than the illusory existence and individuality which imagination ascribes to them—are mere fictions and unrealities. And on the other hand, to anticipate Spinoza's favourite illustration, from this fundamental principle all things follow as necessarily as from the conception of a triangle follow the equality of its angles to two right angles, and all its other properties. If, therefore, Spinoza's system can only be redeemed from naturalism by the idea of an anthropomorphic God—the deus ex machina of popular theology—a pure naturalistic system it is.