Short Studies on Great Subjects

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But if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in its entire
completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the disinterestedness
and calm nobility which pervades his theories of human life and
obligation. He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded.
Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that is the exhaustive
end of all human desire. 'Beatitudo non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa
virtus. Nihil aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei
intuitiva cognitione oritur.' The same spirit of generosity exhibits
itself in all his conclusions. The ordinary objects of desire, he says,
are of such a kind that for one man to obtain them is for another to
lose them; and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not what
any man should labour after. But the fulness of God suffices for us
all; and he who possesses this good desires only to communicate it to
every one, and to make all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--'The
wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour's faults, and
sparingly of the infirmity of human nature; but he will speak largely of
human virtue and human power, and of the means by which that nature can
best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that fear and aversion
with which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to love
and desire it.' And once more:--'He who loves God will not desire that
God should love him in return with any partial or particular affection,
for that is to desire that God for his sake should change his
everlasting nature and become lower than himself.'

One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith would seem in such a
system to be necessarily wanting. Where individual action is resolved
into the modified activity of the Universal Being, all absorbing and all
evolving, the individuality of the personal man is but an evanescent and
unreal shadow. Such individuality as we now possess, whatever it be,
might continue to exist in a future state as really as it exists in the
present, and those to whom it belongs might be anxious naturally for its
persistence. Yet it would seem that if the soul be nothing except the
idea of a body actually existing, when that body is decomposed into its
elements, the soul corresponding to it must accompany it into an
answering dissolution. And this, indeed, Spinoza in one sense actually
affirms, when he denies to the mind any power of retaining consciousness
of what has befallen it in life, 'nisi durante corpore.' But Spinozism
is a philosophy full of surprises; and our calculations of what _must_
belong to it are perpetually baffled. The imagination, the memory, the
senses, whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perish necessarily
and eternally; and the man who has been the slave of his inclinations,
who has no knowledge of God, and no active possession of himself, having
in life possessed no personality, loses in death the appearance of it
with the dissolution of the body.

Nevertheless, there is in God an idea expressing the essence of the
mind, united to the mind as the mind is united to the body, and thus
there is in the soul something of an everlasting nature which cannot
utterly perish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many of his most
solemn conclusions, deserts for a moment the thread of his
demonstrations, and appeals to the consciousness. In spite of our
non-recollection of what passed before our birth, in spite of all
difficulties from the dissolution of the body, 'Nihilominus,' he says,
'sentimus experimurque nos aeternos esse. Nam mens non minus res illas
sentit quas intelligendo concipit, quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis
enim oculi quibus res videt observatque sunt ipsae demonstrationes.'

This perception, immediately revealed to the mind, falls into easy
harmony with the rest of the system. As the mind is not a faculty, but
an act or acts,--not a power of perception, but the perception itself,
in its high union with the highest object (to use the metaphysical
language which Coleridge has made popular and partially intelligible),
the object and the subject become one. If knowledge be followed as it
ought to be followed, and all objects of knowledge be regarded in their
relations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledge of particular outward
things, of nature, or life, or history, becomes, in fact, knowledge of
God; and the more complete or adequate such knowledge, the more the mind
is raised above what is perishable in the phenomena to the idea or law
which lies beyond them. It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal,
not upon the temporary; and being thus occupied with the everlasting
laws, and its activity subsisting in its perfect union with them, it
contracts in itself the character of the objects which possess it. Thus
we are emancipated from the conditions of duration; we are liable even
to death only _quatenus patimur_, as we are passive things and not
active intelligences; and the more we possess such knowledge and are
possessed by it, the more entirely the passive is superseded by the
active--so that at last the human soul may 'become of such a nature that
the portion of it which will perish with the body in comparison with
that of it which shall endure, shall be insignificant and _nullius
momenti_.' (Eth. v. 38.)

Such are the principal features of a philosophy, the influence of which
upon Europe, direct and indirect, it is not easy to over-estimate. The
account of it is far from being an account of the whole of Spinoza's
labours; his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' was the forerunner of
German historical criticism; the whole of which has been but the
application of principles laid down in that remarkable work. But this is
not a subject on which, upon the present occasion, we have cared to
enter. We have designedly confined ourselves to the system which is most
associated with the name of its author. It is this which has been really
powerful, which has stolen over the minds even of thinkers who imagine
themselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in the absolute Pantheism
of Schelling and Hegel, in the Pantheistic Christianity of Herder and
Schleiermacher. Passing into practical life it has formed the strong,
shrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has been able to unite with
the theories of the most extreme materialism.

It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has been unmixedly good),
at the bottom of that more reverent contemplation of nature which has
caused the success of our modern landscape painting, which inspired
Wordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is to become an
instrument of intellectual education, must first be infused into the
lessons of nature; the sense of that 'something' interfused in the
material world--

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;--
A motion and a spirit, which impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

If we shrink from regarding the extended universe, with Spinoza, as an
actual manifestation of Almighty God, we are unable to rest in the mere
denial that it is this. We go on to ask what it _is_, and we are obliged
to conclude thus much at least of it, that every smallest being was once
a thought in his mind; and in the study of what he has made, we are
really and truly studying a revelation of himself.

It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather on the moral
side, that the stumbling-block is lying; in that excuse for evil and for
evil men which the necessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it in
what fair-sounding words we will. So plain this is, that common-sense
people, and especially English people, cannot bring themselves even to
consider the question without impatience, and turn disdainfully and
angrily from a theory which confuses their instincts of right and wrong.
Although, however, error on this side is infinitely less mischievous
than on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world with
impunity; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters we
have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have
given the fatalist a vantage ground of real truth which we ought to have
considered and allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enter
briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of life
are our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what they
say to us; and dislike the lesson as we may, it is cowardice which
refuses to hear it.

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lie before every man, and
that he is free to choose between them, and the responsibility of choice
rests with himself. The fatalist's belief is that every man's actions
are determined by causes external and internal over which he has no
power, leaving no room for any moral choice whatever. The first is
contradicted by facts, the second by the instinct of conscience. Even
Spinoza allows that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard the
future as contingent, and ourselves as able to influence it; and it is
incredible that both our inward convictions and our outward conduct
should be built together upon a falsehood. But if, as Butler says,
whatever be the speculative account of the matter, we are practically
forced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the truth, for it
may be equally said that practically we are forced to regard each other
as _not_ free; and to make allowance, every moment, for influences for
which we cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not,--if
every person of sound mind (in the common acceptation of the term) be
equally able at all times to act right if only he _will_,--why all the
care which we take of children? why the pains to keep them from bad
society? why do we so anxiously watch their disposition, to determine
the education which will best answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we
vary our moral censure according to the opportunities of the offender?
Why do we find excuses for youth, for inexperience, for violent natural
passion, for bad education, bad example? Why, except that we feel that
all these things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and
that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them? But what we act upon
in private life we cannot acknowledge in our ethical theories, and
while our conduct in detail is humane and just, we have been contented
to gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and coarse
generalisations of political necessity. In the swift haste of social
life we must indeed treat men as we find them. We have no time to make
allowances; and the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is a
mere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye though he has
been trained from his cradle in the kennels of St. Giles's; and definite
penalties must be attached to definite acts, the conditions of political
life not admitting of any other method of dealing with them. But it is
absurd to argue from such rude necessity that each act therefore, by
whomsoever committed, is of specific culpability. The act is one thing,
the moral guilt is another. There are many cases in which, as Butler
again allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom, the guilt
attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether.

This is plain matter of fact, and as long as we continue to deny or
ignore it, there will be found men (not bad men, but men who love the
truth as much as ourselves) who will see only what we neglect, and will
insist upon it, and build their systems upon it.

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those natural
tendencies which each of us brings with him into the world,--which we
did not make, and yet which almost as much determine what we are to be,
as the properties of the seed determine the tree which shall grow from
it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or obstinate, or weak, or generous,
or affectionate; there is as large difference in their dispositions as
in the features of their faces. Duties which are easy to one, another
finds difficult or impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Two
children are taught to draw; one learns with ease, the other hardly or
never. In vain the master will show him what to do. It seems so easy: it
seems as if he had only to _will_, and the thing would be done; but it
is not so. Between the desire and the execution lies the incapable organ
which only wearily, and after long labour, imperfectly accomplishes what
is required of it. And the same, _to a certain extent_, unless we will
deny the patent facts of experience, holds true in moral actions. No
wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust aside as these things are in
the popular beliefs, as soon as they are recognised in their full
reality they should be mistaken for the whole truth, and the free-will
theory be thrown aside as a chimera.

It may be said, and it often is said, that such reasonings are merely
sophistical--that however we entangle ourselves in logic, we are
conscious that we are free; we know--we are as sure as we are of our
existence--that we have power to act this way or that way, exactly as we
choose. But this is less plain than it seems; and if granted, it proves
less than it appears to prove. It may be true that we can act as we
choose, but can we _choose_? Is not our choice determined for us? We
cannot determine from the fact, because we always _have chosen_ as soon
as we act, and we cannot replace the conditions in such a way as to
discover whether we could have chosen anything else. The stronger motive
may have determined our volition without our perceiving it; and if we
desire to prove our independence of motive, by showing that we _can_
choose something different from that which we should naturally have
chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire
becoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a _motive_. Again, consciousness
of the possession of any power may easily be delusive; we can properly
judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished;
we know what we _have_ done, and we may infer from having done it that
our power was equal to what it achieved. But it is easy for us to
over-rate our strength if we try to measure our abilities in themselves.
A man who can leap five yards may think that he can leap six; yet he may
try and fail. A man who can write prose may only learn that he cannot
write poetry from the badness of the verses which he produces. To the
appeal to consciousness of power there is always an answer:--that we may
believe ourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that we may
be deceived.

There is, however, another group of feelings which cannot be set aside
in this way, which do prove that, in some sense or other, in some degree
or other, we are the authors of our own actions. It is one of the
clearest of all inward phenomena, that, where two or more courses
involving moral issues are before us, whether we have a consciousness of
_power_ to choose between them or not, we have a consciousness that we
_ought_ to choose between them; a sense of duty--[Greek: hoti dei touto
prattein]--as Aristotle expresses it, which we cannot shake off.
Whatever this consciousness involves (and some measure of freedom it
must involve or it is nonsense), the feeling exists within us, and
refuses to yield before all the batteries of logic. It is not that of
the two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and the
other more immediately tempting. We have a sense of obligation
irrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again by
a sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain will
Spinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as they are with the
theory of powerlessness, are mistakes arising out of a false philosophy.
They are primary facts of sensation most vivid in minds of most vigorous
sensibility; and although they may be extinguished by habitual
profligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed by logic, the paralysis of
the conscience is no more a proof that it is not a real power of
perceiving real things, than blindness is a proof that sight is not a
real power. The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are not
conclusions of reasoning, but immediate sensations like those of seeing
and hearing; and although, like the other senses, they may be mistaken
sometimes in the accounts they render to us, the fact of the existence
of such feelings at all proves that there is something which corresponds
to them. If there be any such things as 'true ideas,' or clear, distinct
perceptions at all, this of praise and blame is one of them, and
according to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it involves. And it
involves that some where or other the influence of causes ceases to
operate, and that some degree of power there is in men of
self-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specific
actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculative
difficulties remain in abundance. It will be said in a case, _e.g._ of
moral trial, that there may have been _power_; but was there _power
enough_ to resist the temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. If
there was not, there was no responsibility. We must answer again from
practical instinct. We refuse to allow men to be considered all equally
guilty who have committed the same faults; and we insist that their
actions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similar
conviction assures us that there is somewhere a point of freedom. Where
that point is--where other influences terminate, and responsibility
begins--will always be of intricate and often impossible solution. But
if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarianism, and
man is what he has been hitherto supposed to be--an exception in the
order of nature, with a power not differing in degree but differing in
kind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all life, is a
mystery; and as to anatomise the body will not reveal the secret of
animation, so with the actions of the moral man. The spiritual life,
which alone gives them meaning and being, glides away before the logical
dissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work upon.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] _Westminster Review_, 1854.

[O] Since these words were written a book has appeared in Paris by an
able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead us to modify
the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give our reasons for
speaking as we do. M. de Careil[P] has discovered in the library at
Hanover, a MS. in the hand-writing of Leibnitz, containing a series of
remarks on the book of a certain John Wachter. It does not appear who
this John Wachter was, nor by what accident he came to have so
distinguished a critic. If we may judge by the extracts at present
before us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, who
had attempted to combine the theology of the Cabbala with the very
little which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza;
and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections
upon them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance of
Spinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an opportunity of
noticing the points on which he most disapproved of Spinoza himself; and
these few notices M. de Careil has now for the first time published as
_The Refutation of Spinoza_, by Leibnitz. They are exceedingly brief and
scanty; and the writer of them would assuredly have hesitated to
describe an imperfect criticism by so ambitious a title. The modern
editor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and we
will not quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his master
had accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what is at least
a curious discovery, and we will not qualify the gratitude which he has
earned by industry and good will. At the same time, the notes themselves
confirm the opinion which we have always entertained, that Leibnitz did
not understand Spinoza. Leibnitz did not understand him, and the
followers of Leibnitz do not understand him now. If he were no more than
what he is described in the book before us--if his metaphysics were
'miserable,' if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothing more
than a second-rate disciple of Descartes--we can assure M. de Careil
that we should long ago have heard the last of him.

There must be something else, something very different from this, to
explain the position which he holds in Germany, or the fascination which
his writings exerted over such minds as those of Lessing or of Goethe;
the fact of so enduring an influence is more than a sufficient answer to
mere depreciating criticism. This, however, is not a point which there
is any use in pressing. Our present business is to justify the two
assertions which we have made. First, that Leibnitz borrowed his _Theory
of the Harmonie Pre-etablie_ from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and,
secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion as is
that of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its real
character.

First for the _Harmonie Pre-etablie_. Spinoza's _Ethics_ appeared in
1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz. In 1696, Leibnitz
announced as a discovery of his own, a Theory of _The Communication of
Substances_, which he illustrates in the following manner:--

'Vous ne comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouver ce que
j'ai avance touchant la communication, ou l'harmonie de deux substances
aussi differentes que l'ame et le corps? Il est vrai que je crois en
avoir trouve le moyen; et voici comment je pretends vous satisfaire.
Figurez-vous deux horloges ou montres qui s'accordent parfaitement. Or
cela se peut faire de trois manieres. La 1^{e} consiste dans une
influence mutuelle. La 2^{e} est d'y attacher un ouvrier habile qui les
redresse, et les mette d'accord a tous moments. La 3^{e} est de
fabriquer ces deux pendules avec tant d'art et de justesse, qu'on se
puisse assurer de leur accord dans la suite. Mettez maintenant l'ame et
le corps a la place de ces deux pendules; leur accord peut arriver par
l'une de ces trois manieres. La voye d'influence est celle de la
philosophie vulgaire; mais comme l'on ne sauroit concevoir des
particules materielles qui puissent passer d'une de ces substances dans
l'autre, il faut abandonner ce sentiment. La voye de l'assistance
continuelle du Createur est celle du systeme des causes occasionnelles;
mais je tiens que c'est faire intervenir Deus ex machina, dans une chose
naturelle et ordinaire, ou selon la raison il ne doit concourir, que do
la maniere qu'il concourt a toutes les autres choses naturelles. Ainsi
il ne reste que mon hypothese; c'est-a-dire que la voye de l'harmonie.
Dieu a fait des le commencement chacune de ces deux substances de telle
nature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propres loix qu'elle a recues avec son
etre, elle s'accorde pourtant avec l'autre tout comme s'il y avoit une
influence mutuelle, ou comme si Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au-dela
de son concours general. Apres cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver a
moins qu'on ne veuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est assez habile
pour se servir de cette artifice,' &c.--LEIBNITZ, _Opera_, p. 133.
Berlin edition, 1840.

Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system with
Christianity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation of
mind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatment, from
what it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza and Leibnitz both agree
in this one peculiar conception in which they differ from all other
philosophers before or after them--that mind and body have no direct
communication with each other, and that the phenomena of them merely
correspond. M. de Careil says they both borrowed it from Descartes; but
that is impossible. Descartes held no such opinion; it was the precise
point of disagreement at which Spinoza parted from him; and therefore,
since in point of date Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and we
know that Leibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must either
suppose that he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation which
he ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely improbable,
that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards re-originated
for himself one of the most singular and peculiar notions which was ever
offered to the belief of mankind.

So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of little moment.
It is more important to ascertain whether, in the hands of Leibnitz,
this theory can be any better reconciled with what is commonly meant by
religion; whether, that is, the ideas of obedience and disobedience,
merit and demerit, judgment and retribution, have any proper place under
it. Spinoza makes no pretension to anything of the kind, and openly
declares that these ideas are ideas merely, and human mistakes.
Leibnitz, in opposition to him, endeavours to re-establish them in the
following manner. He conceives that the system of the universe has been
arranged and predetermined from the moment at which it was launched into
being; from the moment at which God selected it, with all its details,
as the best which could exist; but that it is carried on by the action
of individual creatures (monads as he calls them) which, though
necessarily obeying the laws of their existence, yet obey them with a
'character of spontaneity,' which although 'automata,' are yet voluntary
agents; and therefore, by the consent of their hearts to their actions,
entitle themselves to moral praise or moral censure. The question is,
whether by the mere assertion of the co-existence of these opposite
qualities in the monad man, he has proved that such qualities can
co-exist. In our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or
of a quadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these matters
from which no philosophy can extricate itself. If men can incur guilt,
their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot act otherwise
than they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least it appears to us;
yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would not complain merely of a
theory, and if our earthly life were all in all, and the grave remained
the extreme horizon of our hopes and fears, the _Harmonie Pre-etablie_
might be tolerated as credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful.
It is when forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has
no natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The world
may be in the main good; while the good, from the unknown condition of
its existence, may be impossible without some intermixture of evil; and
although Leibnitz was at times staggered even himself by the misery and
wickedness which he witnessed, and was driven to comfort himself with
the reflection that this earth might be but one world in the midst of
the universe, and perhaps the single chequered exception in an infinity
of stainless globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because
it was imperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark
subject, when nothing better than conjecture was attainable.

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