Part 2 (1/2)

As for Descartes and Hobbes, their notions were no doubt distasteful to conservative minds (the Jesuits were no friends to either), but Descartes regarded himself, and would fain have been regarded by others, as a good Catholic; and Hobbes, theologically, was what in these days we might call a Liberal Protestant. Cartesianism, as we have seen, came to be a name for a type of thought which studied to harmonise science and theology, and one of the most profound religious geniuses of any age--Pascal, was (as we have seen) a Cartesian.

As for Newton, his view of the universe was essentially a religious one, though he did not allow theological speculations to intrude upon his strictly scientific work. His att.i.tude is indicated by a reply to the inquiry of a contemporary theologian as to how the movements and structure of the solar system were to be accounted for.

”To your query I answer that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone.... To compare and adjust all these things together (i.e. quant.i.ties of matter and gravitating powers, etc.) in so great a variety of bodies, argues the cause to be not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanism and geometry.”[7]

Still, the mechanical view contained within it sinister possibilities; and the instincts of conservative thinkers were not altogether at fault.

The mechanical view in itself need not be hostile to a spiritual and rational religion (though it is fatal to most forms of superst.i.tion); and yet that view can be used in the interests of anti-religious prejudice--and, as we shall see, it was so used, and with considerable effect.

Meanwhile, however, we shall pa.s.s on to consider the work of three thinkers who are typical of a revolt from what was in danger of becoming the all-absorbing tyranny of mechanics. This reaction (for so it may be termed) we shall proceed, in the following chapter, to examine.

CHAPTER IV

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REACTIONS

A LAW OF THOUGHT.--Whenever a tendency of thought has been vigorously prosecuted for any length of time, a reaction invariably displays itself. This rule is ill.u.s.trated by the history of thought in the seventeenth century. Mechanical categories, as we have seen, had been steadily extending themselves for the better part of two centuries, and with the materialism of Hobbes the process seemed fairly complete.

Meanwhile, however, human thought began to explore other avenues. Though reaction from mechanical ways of thinking did not (at any rate, in the circles with which we are concerned) take the form of an obscurantist retreat into prejudice or superst.i.tion, the results of the new science and its attendant mechanistic philosophy served as a base for further explorations. The principles which Descartes and Hobbes had laid down were criticised by being carried out to their logical conclusions.

SPINOZA.--The philosopher with whom we shall first concern ourselves was a Jew of Spanish extraction, living in what was then the freest country in Europe--Holland. Spinoza (1632-1677) was undoubtedly the greatest thinker of his own age, which was highly fertile in that respect, and he still stands as one of the most notable figures in the long history of European thought. Not only is his outlook comprehensive, and his thought many-sided, but his standpoint was ”detached” to a degree hitherto unknown. He was untainted, so far as a human being ever can be, by ”anthropomorphism”; he endeavoured to transcend the merely human outlook. Here is always the dividing line between the great and the merely mediocre thinker.

SPINOZA'S METHOD.--Spinoza's philosophical ancestry may be traced back to Bruno, whose acquaintance we made in a previous chapter, but in whose company we did not long remain. This highly original mind had already, by the doctrine of the infinitude and the divinity of nature, shown how the concept of G.o.d and the concept of nature might be closely bound up together. By similar means, Spinoza hoped to indicate the reality of the spiritual, without disturbing the mechanical world-conception which the new science and new philosophy had created between them. He wished somehow to find G.o.d not outside, but _in_ Nature; not in disturbances of the order of Nature, but _in that order itself_.

THE TERM NATURE.--It would be a misapprehension to suppose that the terms ”G.o.d” and ”Nature” are regarded by Spinoza as interchangeable, though his numerous critics were accustomed to declare that this was the case. On the contrary, Spinoza, in order to antic.i.p.ate the misunderstanding which he saw might arise on this point, reintroduced into philosophy a pair of terms which the Scholastics had long before brought into currency, but which had since fallen out of fas.h.i.+on--_Natura naturans_ and _Natura naturata_. We might perhaps translate the former of these, ”Creative Nature,” and the latter, ”Created Nature.” _Natura naturans_ is equivalent to ”Nature as a creative power,” or ”The creative power immanent in Nature.” _Natura naturata_ is equivalent to ”Nature as it is when created,” or ”The results of the creative power immanent in Nature.” And the _Natura naturans_ is active in the _Natura naturata_ at all points: the creative power is immanent in creation. As Spinoza puts it in one of his letters:

”I a.s.sert that G.o.d is (as it is called) the immanent, not the external cause of all things. That is to say, I a.s.sert with Paul, that in G.o.d all things live and move.... But if any one thinks that the _Theologico-Political Treatise_ (one of his works) a.s.sumes that G.o.d and Nature are one and the same, he is entirely mistaken.”[8]

Thus, for Spinoza, the order of nature, which had seemed to so many of his contemporaries, from the religious point of view, such a devastating conception, as leaving no room for the spiritual, was itself only explicable if interpreted spiritually.

”Whatever is, is in G.o.d, and nothing can exist or be conceived without G.o.d” (_Ethics_ i. 15) sums up his att.i.tude. All things may be, as the new science taught, 'determined' but they are determined ”by the necessity of the divine nature” (_Ethics_ i. 29).

THE ”ETHICS.”--Spinoza may rightly be termed a man of one book. In his _Ethics_ is to be found a complete and final expression of his philosophy. ”How boundless,” says Goethe of this great book, ”is the disinterestedness conspicuous in every sentence, how exalted the resignation which submits itself once for all to the great laws of existence, instead of trying to get through life with the help of trivial consolations; and what an atmosphere of peace breathes through the whole!”

According to its teaching the true happiness and highest activity of men is to be found in what Spinoza terms ”the intellectual love of G.o.d.” The phrase seems to have been used to designate that full and clearer knowledge which is aware that we ourselves and all the conditions of our life are determined by the infinite Nature, by G.o.d Himself, who moves in us as well as in all things acting upon us. The initiated no longer regard themselves as single, isolated, impotent beings, but as included in the divine nature. Themselves and all things are seen under the form of eternity. This thought is, according to Spinoza, the fruit of the highest activity of the human mind; this is the _amor intellectualis dei_; and the supreme good for man.

His doctrine of immortality is bound up with this intellectual form of religious mysticism--knowledge of G.o.d involves partic.i.p.ation in His immortality:

”Death is the less harmful the more the mind's knowledge is clear and distinct, and the more the mind loves G.o.d.... The human mind may be of such a nature that the part of it which we showed to perish with the body may be of no moment to it in respect to what remains.”

He who is ”affected with love towards G.o.d” has a mind ”of which the greater part is eternal.” Thus the soul achieves its emanc.i.p.ation by identifying itself with G.o.d--who is the object of its knowledge and love. The path is arduous, and the closing pa.s.sage of the _Ethics_ admits this:

”If the road I have shown is very difficult, it can yet be discovered.

And clearly it must be very hard when it is so seldom found.... But all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.”

SPINOZA AND RELIGION.--It is interesting to note that Spinoza, though a ”free-thinking” Jew, adopts towards the fundamental dogma of Christianity an att.i.tude which approximates to the cla.s.sical expression of it in the Fourth Gospel. He held that ”G.o.d's eternal wisdom, which reveals itself in all things, and especially in the human mind, has given a special revelation of itself in Christ.”

Perhaps his ethic, like that of the Stoics, with whom he had so much in common, was better adapted to satisfy the needs of the philosopher than of the ordinary man. But, in the seventeenth century, it was the philosophers and learned men that were in need of a spiritual interpretation of the universe; common men had theirs already, in the traditional pietism which philosophers are often too ready to despise.

To Spinoza--and this is one of the many indications of the genuine profundity of his thought--the simple believers seemed already to be in possession of too much of the truth for it to be desirable or profitable for them to indulge in speculation. To the question of his landlady at the Hague as to whether she could be saved by the religion which she professed, his reply was that her religion was good, that she should seek no other, and that she would certainly be saved by it if she led a quiet and pious life.