Part 412 (1/2)
SPEZIA (20), the chief naval station, ”the Portsmouth,” of Italy; occupies a strongly fortified site at the head of a bay on the W. side of Italy, 56 m. SE. of Genoa; here are the naval s.h.i.+pbuilding yards, national a.r.s.enal, navy store-houses, besides schools of navigation, manufactures of cables, sail-cloth, &c.
SPHINX, a fabled animal, an invention of the ancient Egyptians, with the body and claws of a lioness, and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which are frequently placed before temples on each side of the approach; the most famous of the sphinxes was the one which waylaid travellers and tormented them with a riddle, which if they could not answer she devoured them, but which Oedipus answered, whereupon she threw herself into the sea. ”Such a sphinx,” as we are told in ”Past and Present,” ”is this life of ours, to all men and nations. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness, the face and bosom of a G.o.ddess, but ending in the claws and the body of a lioness ... is a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. Answer her riddle--Knowest thou the meaning of to-day?--it is well with thee. Answer it not; the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws.”
SPICE ISLANDS. See MOLUCCAS.
SPINELLO, ARETINO, a celebrated Italian fresco-painter, born at Arezzo, where, with visits to Florence, his life was chiefly spent; was in his day the rival of Giotto, but few of his frescoes are preserved, and such of his paintings as are to be found in various galleries of Europe are inferior to his frescoes (1330-1410).
SPINOLA, AMBROSIO, MARQUIS OF, great Spanish general under Philip II. of Spain, born at Genoa, with a following of 9000, maintained at his own expense, took Ostend after a resistance of 3 years, in consequence of which feat he was appointed commander-in-chief, in which capacity maintained and again maintained a long struggle with Prince Maurice of Na.s.sau, terminated only with the death of the latter; his services on behalf of Spain, in the interest of which he spent his fortune, were never acknowledged, and he died with poignant grief (1571-1630).
SPINOZA, BENEDICT, great modern philosopher, born in Amsterdam, of Jews of Portuguese extraction in well-to-do circ.u.mstances, and had been trained as a scholar; began with the study of the Bible and the Talmud, but soon exchanged the study of theology in these for that of physics and the works of Descartes, in which study he drifted farther and farther from the Jewish creed, and at length openly abandoned it; this exposed him to a persecution which threatened his life, so that he left Amsterdam and finally settled at The Hague, where, absorbed in philosophic study, he lived in seclusion, earning a livelihood by polis.h.i.+ng optical gla.s.ses, which his friends disposed of for him; his days were short; he suffered from ill-health, and died of consumption when he was only 44; he was a man of tranquil temper, moderate desires, purity of motive, and kindly in heart; his great work, his ”Ethica,” was published a year after his death; he had held it back during his lifetime because he foresaw it would procure him the name of atheist, which he shrank from with horror; Spinoza's doctrine is summed up by Dr. Stirling thus, ”Whatever is, is; and that is extension and thought. These two are all that is; and besides these there is nought. But these two are one; they are attributes of the single substance (that which, for its existence, stands in need of nothing else), very G.o.d, in whom, then, all individual things and all individual ideas (modes of extension those, of thought these) are comprehended and take place”; thus we see Spinoza includes under the term extension all individual objects, and under thought all individual ideas, and these two he includes in G.o.d, as He in whom they live and move and have their being,--a great conception and a pregnant, being the speculative ground of the being of all that lives and is; not without good reason does Novalis call him ”Der Gott-getrunkene Mensch,” the G.o.d-intoxicated man (1632-1677).
SPINOZISM, the pantheism of SPINOZA (q. v.), which regards G.o.d as the one self-subsistent substance, and both matter and thought attributes of Him.
SPIRES or SPEYER, an old German town on the left bank of the Rhine, in the Palatinate, 14 m. SW. of Heidelberg, the seat of a bishop and with a cathedral, of its kind one of the finest in Europe, and the remains of the Retscher, or imperial palace, where in 1529 the Diet of the Empire was held at which the Reformers first got the name of Protestants, because of their protestation against the imperial decree issued at Worms prohibiting any further innovations in religion.
SPIRIT (lit. breath of life), in philosophy and theology is the Divine mind incarnating itself in the life of a man, and breathing in all he thinks and does, and so is as the life-principle of it; employed also to denote any active dominating and pervading principle of life inspired from any quarter whatever and coming to light in the conduct.
SPIRIT, THE HOLY, the Divine Spirit manifested in Christ which descended upon His disciples in all its fulness when, shortly after His decease, their eyes were opened to see the meaning of His life and their hearts to feel the power of it.
SPIRITUAL, THE, the fruit of the quickening and abiding action of a higher principle at the centre of the being, operating so as to suffuse the whole of it, pervade the whole of it, to its utmost limits, which, seating itself in the heart of the thoughts and affections, works and weaves itself into all the life tissues and becomes part and parcel of the very flesh and blood. No idea, however true, however elevated or elevating one may feel it, is spiritual till it centralises in the heart and affects all the issues thereof.
SPIRITUALISM, a term that has two very different meanings, denoting at one time the doctrine that the only real is the SPIRITUAL (q. v.), and at another time a belief in the existence of spirits whom we, by means of certain media, can hold correspondence with, and who, whether we are conscious of it or not, exercise in some cases an influence over human destiny, more particularly of the spirits of dead men with whom in their disembodied state we can by means of certain mediums hold correspondence, and who, from their continued interest in the world, do in that state keep watch and ward over its affairs as well as mingle in them, forming a world of spirits gone from hence, yet more or less active in the sense world.
SPITHEAD, the eastern portion of the strait which separates the Isle of Wight from the Hamps.h.i.+re coast, 14 m. long, with an average breadth of 4 m.; is a sheltered and safe riding for s.h.i.+ps, and as such is much used by the British navy; receives its name from a long ”spit” of sandbank jutting out from the mainland. See the _SOLENT_.
SPITZBERGEN, the name of an Arctic archipelago lying 400 m. N. of Norway, embracing West Spitzbergen (15,260 sq. m.), North-East Land, Stans Foreland, King Charles land or Wiche Island, Barents Land, Prince Charles Foreland, besides numerous smaller islands; practically lies under great fields of ice, enormous glaciers, and drifts of snow, pierced here and there by mountain peaks, hence the name Spitzbergen; the home of vast flocks of sea-birds, of polar bears, and Arctic foxes, while herds of reindeer are attracted to certain parts by a scanty summer vegetation; there are no permanent inhabitants, but the fiord-cut sh.o.r.es are frequented in summer by Norwegian seal and walrus hunters.
SPLuGEN, an Alpine pa.s.s in the Swiss canton of the Grisons; the roadway 24 m. long, opened in 1822, crosses the Rhaetian Alps from Chur, the capital of Grisons, to Chiavenna, in Lombardy, and reaches a height of 6595 ft.
SPOHR, LUDWIG, musical composer and violinist, born in Brunswick; produced both operas and oratorios, ”Faust” among the former, the ”Last Judgment” and the ”Fall of Babylon” among the latter; his violin-playing was admirable, producing from the tones of the instrument the effects of the human voice; wrote a handbook for violinists (1784-1859).
SPOLETO (8), an ancient city of Central Italy, built on the rocky slopes of a hill, in the province of Umbria, 75 m. NE. of Rome; is protected by an ancient citadel, and has an interesting old cathedral with frescoes by Lippo Lippi, and an imposing 7th-century aqueduct; was capital of a Lombard duchy, and in 1220 was joined to the Papal States.
SPONTINI, GASPARO, Italian operatic composer, born at Majolati; settled in Paris in 1803, and a year later made his mark with the little opera ”Milton,” and subsequently established his fame with the three grand operas, ”La Vestale,” ”Ferdinand Cortez,” and ”Olympia”; from 1820 to 1842 was stationed at Berlin under court patronage, and in the face of public and press opposition continued to write in a strain of elevated and melodious music various operas, including his greatest work ”Agnes von Hohenstaufen” (1774-1851).
SPORADES, a group of islands in the aegean Sea, of which the largest is the Mitylene.