NOTE XXXVIII., page 375.

SPINOZA.

The discovery first of letters of Spinoza and then of the Brief Treatise, concerning God, Man, and Human Happiness,' has recently given a fresh stimulus to the study of his writings. It has brought into the foreground the questions, What were the sources of his philosophy? and, How did it grow up in the mind of its author? It has lighted the way to the answers.

As regards the inquiry into the sources of his doctrine, here, as everywhere else in the history of philosophy, the result of investigation has been proof of the falsity and shallowness of the notion of Hegel that philosophies have succeeded one another in a single linear series, like beads on a string, or Indians in a file, or like a straight line of buckets, each lesser destined to be emptied into a bigger in front of it. Here, as everywhere else, it has been found that the history of philosophy is not in the least like a single thread, but is rather like a very broad web; and that a great man does not hang on to a particular other great man, but rather to the whole past and the whole present. Another result is that Spinoza has been ascertained to have borrowed far more from others than was supposed. It has taken long to make out, even approximately, the extent to which he was indebted to others, because, like most writers of his age, he very seldom gives a reference to authors who had preceded him; when he does refer to them, it is generally to indicate dissent from some of their views. The result ascertained was, however, one which might

have been anticipated, and which will lower no reasonable man's estimate of Spinoza's ability. The vast system which he constructed, viewed as a whole, is one of the most original which the entire history of philosophy presents. It certainly would have been neither so vast nor so original had the architect attempted to make his bricks for himself.

In the previous note I have mentioned that Spinoza has been shown by the recent investigations to have owed not a little to Bruno. It must be added that he has been proved beyond all doubt to have derived far more from authors of his own race than had been supposed. He will never be understood by any one who forgets that he was by birth and training a Jew; that the first and most powerful influences which acted on his mind were Jewish; that he knew the Hebrew Scriptures from his youth; that he was early initiated into the study of the Talmud; that he had become conversant even before he left school with the writings of the famous Jewish scholars and thinkers who lived in France, Spain, North Africa, &c., during the middle ages. This has often. been practically forgotten, however, owing to the want of Jewish learning which exists among Gentiles. A working knowledge of Hebrew is one of the rarest accomplishments among Gentile philosophers. Hence, had the Jews themselves not come to the rescue, we would probably still have been ignorant of the closeness and comprehensiveness of the relation between Spinoza and earlier Jewish thinkers. But this they have done, and the works of Franck and Munk, Joël and Mises, Bernays, Benemozegh, and Jarackewsky, &c., have to a great extent laid bare those roots of Spinozism which were fixed in Jewish soil. They have amply proved that, to be

conceived of rightly, he must be viewed as connecting and combining two great developments of thought—an Eastern and a Western, a Jewish and a Gentile; that nothing was more natural than that a Jew, situated as he was, should have been the founder of Rationalism; that he founded it mainly by combining, developing, and organising the ideas and principles of a long series of Jewish Biblical students; and that he also derived many of the elements and doctrines of his speculative system from Jewish sources.

The political theory of Spinoza, which he expounds in a special treatise, is in the main derived from Hobbes, whose De Cive' and 'Leviathan' acquired from their first publication great celebrity on the Continent. Spinoza refers to Hobbes, but only slightly, and in his usual way of indicating dissent. The differences between the two authors are not inconsiderable, and are interesting, but the similarities are far more numerous. Spinoza was an able political thinker, but much less so than Hobbes, and he rather modified the political theory of Hobbes than formed one of his own. The German historians of the progress of political science decidedly err when they place him in this department on a level with the Englishman.

The discovery of Spinoza's indebtedness to the authors mentioned here led some to underestimate the influence exercised on him by Descartes. They have avoided the error of regarding Spinozism as an exaggerated or corrupted Cartesianism only to fall into that of denying essential connections between the two systems. The latter error is as great as the former. Nothing has come to light to justify it. In some respects the recently-discovered compositions show even more clearly than those

previously published how great were Spinoza's obligations to Descartes. For instance, his account of the affections in the Brief Treatise' follows Descartes almost slavishly; while his theory of the affections in the 'Ethics' so little resembles the theory out of which it was developed, that he can speak of Descartes as having merely exhibited in treating of the passions "his own singular ingenuity and acuteness." There is no doubt that Spinoza received from Descartes the definition of substance, such a conception of two substances derived from and dependent on God-viz., spirit or thought, and matter or extension. -as was capable of easy conversion into the conception of their being merely affections of one infinite substance, and other notions of the utmost significance in his sys

It only requires to be remembered that these notions entered into a mind already possessed with others. which necessarily and powerfully influenced them. There is no doubt that he received from Descartes the mathematical method of philosophical exposition. It only requires to be remembered that this method was not essential to his philosophy, and was only employed by him after his system had been substantially constituted; that the secret of his doctrine must not be sought for in the mathematical method, or in any "particular mathematical image."

The recent discoveries also show clearly that Spinoza's system was very slowly and gradually developed, and passed through various phases in its author's mind before it was elaborated into the shape which it assumes in the 'Ethics.' It is true that Spinoza died at the early age of forty-four, and that his 'Ethics' were ready for the press two years before his death; but the Brief Treatise,' which traverses almost the whole ground afterwards

surveyed in the 'Ethics,' was certainly written not less than seventeen years before his death, and probably more; so that fifteen years at least, and perhaps twenty or twentyone years, intervened between the first written sketch and the final form of the 'Ethics,' during the whole of which time the strenuous and incessant work of Spinoza's life was the elaboration of a philosophy of which all the main features and essential principles were apprehended by him from the commencement. The Brief Treatise' and the 'Ethics' are the two extreme terms in the growth of the philosophy of Spinoza ; and although in the course of that growth scarcely a single thought escaped modification, still, as the growth had been a continuous and consistent self-development, even its two extreme stages correspond in all their features as the countenance of the adult man to that of the child. It is not yet possible, however, to trace clearly and certainly the process of growth from the one of these terms to the other. It has not yet even been determined beyond doubt in what order the intervening works were composed. In the absence of direct testimony this can only be done by careful examination of their contents,-by a delicate, subtle, subjective kind of criticism, very apt to lead different inquirers to different and discordant results. In fact, the order of the composition of the works has to be determined from the course of the development of the thought, and the course of the development of the thought from the order of the composition of the works, with no external help except what is furnished by the letters arranged and studied chronologically. There are internal grounds for supposing that the fragment on the "Improvement of the Mind" was written immediately after the Brief Treatise,' the 'Theologico-Political Trea