more. Turn it is as much as saying that the mind can a certain state, called sight; another, when know nothing but its own ideas; and yet, in relation with the tympanum, excites the by a curious perversion, the subjects of state we call sound. These states of sight ontological speculation are still thought and sound are relatively true-they are cognizable, and still occupy many a restless positive facts of consciousness; but they mind! With subtle truth is the Greek do not at all represent the actual nature of word for opinion the same as appearance the peculiar on-goings per se, which excited (doğa); and the more we meditate this them. The phenomena have only this rematter, the more we shall be convinced of lation to us. Light is not light to a flower it. What is perception? A state of the-it is not what we call light; but it is, perceiving mind-a change from a previous nevertheless, something. The flower, supstate. We are conscious of these changes, posing it to formalize its experience into a and to their exciting causes we give forms definition, would give a very different one and names; but we are not conscious of from ours; simply because its experience any thing beyond these changes-i. e. exter- must be different from ours, owing to the nal to our own consciousness. different relations in which it stands to the how you will, there is nothing in the fact exciting cause. The world, apart from our of consciousness but consciousness itself. consciousness-i. e. the non-ego quá non-ego Being and knowing are here one; to know is something utterly different from the more, would involve the necessity to be world in our consciousness of it, for our consciousness is not the world in itself, but Some of the ancients supposed that a state of ourselves. Nature is an eternal things threw off airy forms of themselves, darkness, an eternal silence! Light, with which were grasped by the mind as the its myriad forms and colors-sound, with things themselves were grasped by the its thousand-voiced life-are but human This rude hypothesis was soon phenomena-are but states of the mind. felt to be inapplicable; and a further The great mistake lies in taking a metastep in the philosophy of perception was phor for a fact, and arguing as if the mind taken, when it was explained by the were a mirror. It is no mirror; it gives mind reflecting, as a mirror, the images no faithful reflection of the world; it gives (ideas) of things. A final step was only a faithful report of its own states, as taken, when it was shown that the mind excited by the world. Hence the common does not contemplate forms as the eye sees error respecting the "deception of the them that the mind is not apart from its senses. The senses never deceive us! perceptions, but that it is the perceptions- Whatever popular prejudice, or popular that a perception is a state of the percipient, philosophy, may assert, the testimony of and that mind is the collective unity of the sen es is inviolable, and must be acthese various states. This immortal dis- cepted as such. Let us prove this by recovery belongs to Hume; though Spinoza ference to a common instance: a tower had, in his way, also foreseen it. If, appears round at a certain distance, but therefore, an idea is a state of the ideator, square when you approach near to it. This, and not an image of some external thing, you say, is a deception of the senses? This, then it follows that it is the mind which we say, is the truth of the senses. "gives the forms to things unknown;" that men, at the former distance, it will appear space-time-extension-light-sound-round, and to all men, at the latter distance, smell-order-beauty, &c., are not inhe- square. This because the senses faithfully rent in the essences of things, but are the forms with which Consciousness endows things are the states excited in the mind by external things. This discovery is the glory of modern psychology. hand. Such has been the progress of the philosophy of perception; and its final result leaves us now no doubt but that the facts of consciousness are purely relative and not absolute facts. Thus a certain on-going of external nature, when in proper relation with the human retina, excites in the mind *Primum quod actuale mentis humanæ esse constituit, quàm idea rei alicujus singularis actu existentis. Ethica, pars ii., prop. xi. VOL. II. No. IV. 35 To all report the impressions, and the actual impressions are in the first instance what we call round, and in the second what we call square. Nothing can be more plain. The impression is a consequence of the relation in which your eye stands to the tower-it is A+B=C. When, in walking up to the tower, you change the relation, and alter it to A+D, then of course you have another result in E (square); would you have the result the same in both cases? That, indeed, would be a deception of the senses, for A plus B, and A plus D would then both equal C. As it is, the result of the relation is faithfully recorded. At a certain distance the tower appears round, at remarkable, however, because he had also another, square; it all the while is neither, for round and square are the forms of the mind, and not the constituents of things. The result of this long but indispensable digression is, that ideas are the images of things as they exist in relation to us, but not the formule of things as they exist in themselves. If, therefore, we cannot get deeper than phenomena-if every way we turn a thing we can only get an appearance of it, and cannot absorb its being in our own-how then shall we speculate on things in themselves? If we cannot penetrate the essence of a flower, how shall we penetrate the essence of God? seen that in some sense the subjective was not the absolute expression of the objective as is proved by his celebrated argument for the destruction of final causes, wherein he showed that order was a thing of the imagination, as were also right and wrong, useful and hurtful-these being merely such in relation to us. Still more striking is his anticipation of Kant, in this passage-"Ex quibus clarè videre est, mensuram, tempus et numerum nibil esse præter cogitandi, seu potiùs imaginandi modos;" which should have led him to suspect that the same law of mental forms was also applicable to all other subjects. This consideration, therefore, that the Thus, then, may the inquirer escape mind is not a passive mirror reflecting the Spinozism by denying the possibility of nature of things, but the partial creator of metaphysical science; thus, and thus only. its own forms-that in perception there is But in denying it he will not the less be nothing but certain changes in the perci- grateful to the great thinker who elaborated pient-this consideration, we say, is the it. He will revere him as one of the imdestruction of the very basis of Ontology, mortal intellects whose labors cleared the for it expressly teaches that the subjective way for the present state of things; and idea is not the correlate of the objective he will affectionately trace the coincidences fact; and only upon the belief that our of Spinoza with those who went before and ideas are the perfect and adequate images those who came after him. Pantheism is of external things can any metaphysical as old as philosophy. It was taught in the speculation rest. Misled by the nature of old Greek schools-by Plato, by St. Augusgeometry, which draws its truths from the tine, and by the Jews. Indeed, one may mind, as the spider draws the web from its say that pantheism, under one of its various bosom, Des Cartes assumed that metaphy- shapes, is the necessary consequence of sical truths could be attained in the same all metaphysical inquiry, when pushed to way. This was a confusion of reasoning, its logical limits; and from this reason do yet Spinoza, Leibnitz, and their successors, we find it in every age and nation. The followed him unhesitatingly. Spinoza, dreamy contemplative Indian, the quick however, had read Bacon's denouncement versatile Greek, the practical Roman, the of this à priori method, though evidently quibbling Scholastic, the ardent Italian, the unprepared to see the truth of the protest. lively Frenchman, and the slow EnglishIt is curious to read his criticism of Bacon; man, have all pronounced it as the final he looks on it as that writer's great error truth of philosophy. Wherein consists to have mistaken the knowledge of the first cause and origin of things. On the nature of mind, he says, Bacon speaks very confusedly, and while he proves nothing, judges much. For, in the first place, he supposes that the human intellect, besides the deceptions of the senses, is subject to the deceptions of its own nature, and that it conceives every thing according to the analogies of its own nature, and not according to the analogies of the universe, so that it is like an unequal mirror to the rays of things which mixes the conditions of its own nature with those of external things.* We look upon Spinoza's aberration as Spinoza'a originality ?-what is his merit? are natural questions, when we see him only lead to the same result as others had before proclaimed. His merit and originality consist in the systematic exposition and development of that doctrine: in his hands, for the first time, it assumes the St. Augustine savs- Substantialitèr Deus ubique diffusus est. Sed sic est Deus per cuncta diffusus, ut non sit qualitas mundi, sed substantia creatrix mundi, sine labore regens et sine onere continens mundum. Non tamen per spatia luco rum, quasi mole diffusa, ita ut in dimidio mundi corpore sit dimidius, atque ita per totum totus; sed in solo cœlo totus, et in solâ terrâ totus, et m cœlo et in terrá totus, et nulla contentus loco, sed in se ipso ubique totus."-(Quoted in Mrs. Austin on Goethe, vol. iii. p. 272 ) "Nam primò supponit, quod intellectus humanus præter fallaciam sensuum suâ solâ naturâ fallitur, omniaque fingit ex analogiâ suæ naturæ et †The Cabbalists taught, however, a more vague non ex analogiâ universi, adeò ut sit instar speculi and fanciful pantheism, founded on material an inæqualis ad radias rerum, qui suam naturam na-logies and metaphors.-See Salvador: Jesus Christ turæ rerum immiscet."-Epist. ii. Opera, p. 398. et sa Doctrine, tome i. p. 122. aspect of a science. The Greek and In- do the most useful, and seemingly the most dian pantheism is a vague, fanciful doc- obvious arts, make their way among mantrine, carrying with it no scientific convic- kind." tion; it may be true-it looks true-but This pleasant satire points to a great the proof is wanting. But with Spinoza truth. We might have gone on baffled, there is no choice: if you understand his yet persisting, seeking the unknowable, terms, admit the possibility of his science, and seize his meaning, you can no more doubt his conclusions than you can doubt Euclid; no mere opinion is possible, conviction only is possible. and building palaces on air, "miracles of rare delight," but uninhabitable, untenable-had not a Bacon, answering the im perious wants of his age, arisen to point out that the method men were pursuing was no path of transit to the truth, but led only to the land of chimeras. Bacon, we say, energetically denounced all existing methods, and pointed out a new one, such as Time alone could appreciate. With how noble a confidence does he rely upon the Future! and how gloriously that Future has filled the measure of his prophecies! Did, then, Philosophy stop with Spinoza? did it either accept his conclusions, or reexamine their foundations? No: it is one of the sad conditions of metaphysics (or rather of ontology) to have no rest, no repose. Age rolls over age as the wave follows its brother, and each casts upon the shore its glittering foam; only foam, alas! and scattered by the next breeze; dazzling, But humanity could not at once relinbewitching, evanescent. It is one of the quish its habits, and with the great Leibnitz curious points in the history of humanity, at its head again endeavored to prove the that methods are so seldom altered. Each secret of the world. Leibnitz, who refused man follows his father, and endeavors to to acknowledge Spinoza, never doubted the succeed where generations have failed; efficiency of his method; he went on he never once suspects the nature of the " 'burning down his house" after his own method he employs that he takes for magnificent fashion, and never questioned granted; yet, in most cases, it is precisely its success. What were the results? We there that the cause of failure lies. This speak not of his mathematical genius, but explains the slowness of inventions, and of his ontological discoveries. The results the repugnance to novel methods; what were his famous monadologie, and his still has been tried must be the right. When more famous pre-established harmony: Bo-bo discovered the virtues of roast pig, wonderful conceptions, no doubt, but barby the accidental burning of his house, ac- ren as the east wind. These he transmitted cording to that charming philosopher Elia, to Wolff. Kant demolished them, and the only way he could think of again pro- established Spinoza's notion respecting curing the luxury, was by again burning down his house. "It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burned down now more frequently than ever." The secret got abroad; every one was anxious to have his roast pig; and "now there was nothing but fires to be seen in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus, this custom of firing houses continued till, in the process of time (says my manuscript), a sage arose like our Locke, - who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed, of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees (concludes the manuscript)| space and time, as forms of the mind. Fichte followed with his idealistic Spinozism, as he himself calls it, to prove that there is "ursprünglich nur eine Substanz, das Ich; in dieser einen Substanz sind alle möglichen Accidenzen, also alle möglichen Realitäten gesetzt." Then came Schelling, whose philosophy is saturated with Spinozism, and from which it will only be necessary to notice two or three fundamental positions, to see how perfectly they agree with those of the Ethica: "Gott is das einzig Reale, ausserdem es schlechterdings kein Seyn giebt. Was also existirt, existirt mit Gott, und was ist, ist dem Wesen nach, ihm gleich." Compare Spinoza, Def. vi. and Prop. xv.- "Quicquid est in Deo est et nihil sine Deo esse nec concepi potest." Again,-" Gott ist nicht das Höchste, sondern er ist das schlechtin Eine; er ist nicht anzuschauen als Gipfel oder Ende, sondern als Centrum, nicht im Gegensatz einer Peripherie, sondern als "Essays of Elia :" Dissertation upon Roast Pig. This audacious speculation Strauss first Alles in Allem."-Spinoza, passim. Again, | "Gott enthält die möglichkeit seines made the ground of a serious schism; its Seyns in sich selbst."-Spinoza, Prop. vi. ; wants of philosophical fundus, however, Coroll. ii. ; and Def. i. and iii. The position sufficiently guards us from its reception of Spinoza, that the universe is but the here. England can well afford to bear the aspect of God, considered under his infi- sneers of Germany and France at her innite attribute of extension, is thus stated capacity for metaphysical speculation, when by Schelling" Die Unendlichkeit ist she contemplates the results of that specuGott, angeschaut von Seite seines Affirmirt- lation in the works of modern metaphysiSeyns." Respecting the impersonality of cians. The strong practical sense of our the human mind, and its dependence on the countrymen revolts at the curious subtleties universal mind, Spinoza writes,-"Hinc and cobwebs so indefatigably produced by sequitur mentem humanam partem esse the arachne philosophers of Germany; and infiniti intellectus Dei; ac proinde cum di- though revolting more from instinct than cimus mentem humanam hoc, vel illud per- from a clear vision into the causes of metacipere, aliud nihil dicimus, quàm quòd physical impossibilities, yet the instinct is Deus, non quatenus infinitus est sed qua- a happy one. Foreigners accuse us, and tenus per naturam humanæ mentis expli- accuse us justly, of a want of appreciation of catur, sive quatenus humanæ mentis essen- generalities—a want of the true philosophical tiam constituit, hanc vel illam habet ideam." faculty of generalization: but this accusa(Ethice, pars. ii. prop. xi. coroll.) Schel- tion is by them coupled with an artifice of ling, precisely to the same effect, says, which they are unconscious. We are averse "Das Denken ist nicht mein Denken, und to generalization, but it does not follow that das Seyn nicht mein Seyn; denn Alles ist those who are fond of it manifest a greater nur Gottes oder des Alles. Ueberhaupt aptitude for philosophy because they apply gibt es nicht eine Vernunft, die wir hätten, it to metaphysics-on the contrary, such sondern nur eine Vernunft, die uns hat." an application is in itself eminently unphi(Jahrbücher der Medicin, bd. i. p. 13.) We losophical in the present state of the human have dragged these fundamental notions mind. They, however, couple the subjects forward to show how, in spite of different of metaphysics with the powers of generaterminology, and a more enthusiastic poet-lization, and fancy that the one includes ical manner, Schelling is the same as Spi- and presupposes the other, so that those noza in his philosophy; he is far less rigo- who are not metaphysicians are averse to rous and scientific in his method. Hegel's generalities. But in truth it is our weakmind was more akin to Spinoza's than any ness that we do not comprehend the imof the others, and accordingly, in his writ-portance of generalities, and it is our ings we still more distinctly trace the in- strength that we reject as frivolous all mefluence of the Ethica, disguised under taphysics. pedantic terminologies, and useless distinctions. It may be curious here to quote Spinoza's anticipation of the Hegelian Christology, which, in the hands of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno Baur, has made so much noise in the theological world:-"I tell you," says Spinoza, in his letter to Oldenburg, "that it is not necessary for your salvation that you should believe in Christ according to the flesh; but of that eternal Son of God, i. e. the eternal wisdom of God, which is manifested in all things, but mostly in the human mind, and most of all in Jesus Christ; a very different conception must be formed."-" Dico ad salutem non esse omninò necesse, Christum secundùm carnem noscere, sed de æterno illo filio Dei, hoc est, Dei æternâ sapientiâ, quæ sese in omnibus rebus, et maximè in mente humanâ et omnium maximè in Chris to Jesu manifestavit, longè aliter sentiendum." "Opera Posthuma," p. 450. The deplorable paradoxes and absurdities into which the modern thinkers have been led, are owing to the vicious method which they follow, and which we have above combated. In Spinoza's time this Method was the only one which with his education he could adopt. In Spinoza Ontology reached its consummation; it remained for posterity to apply this doctrine to every special case, or else to re-examine its foundations to see if they were sound. Posterity did neither of these (with the exception of an insignificant number of Baconian thinkers), and the progress of humanity has been sensibly retarded in consequence. Such was Benedict Spinoza-thus he lived and thought. A brave and simple man, earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation; a system that has been decried for nearly two centuries, as HER CHILD'S DEATH. BY WILLIAM JONES. From Bentley's Miscellany. "Bring me flowers all young and sweet, Ihat I may strew the winding-sheet, My beautiful! 'tis now a year the most iniquitous and blasphemous of THE MOTHER ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF human invention; and which has now, within the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole nation's phi losophy, ranking among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious intellects of the age. The ribald Atheist turns out, on nearer acquaintance, to be a "God-intoxicated man." The blasphemous Jew, becomes a pious, virtuous, and creative thinker. The dissolute Heretic becomes a child-like, simple, self-denying and heroic man. We look into his works with calm earnestness, and read there another curious page of human history: the majestic strug gle with the mysteries of existence has failed, as it always must fail; but the struggle demands our warmest admiration, and the man our ardent sympathy. Spinoza stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve to warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which hundreds of their brethren have perished. G. H. L. Since thou wert laid beneath the sod, A year ago! thou then hadst life, But feeble strength was with it given; A year ago! It seems a day Since last I gazed upon thy face; I sought thy future weal to trace. No more the light of hope doth shine, A year ago! thy happy smile Dispell'd the cares that oft oppress, In word or look-I am bereft! A year ago! light laughter broke The gloomy stillness of these walls; The echoes from these ancient halls. Save when the winds at times grow wild, A year ago! on this sad day The spoiler dimm'd those eyes of blue, Lifeless, within the earth's chill breast, My beautiful! whom still I love, Though parted from me by the grave, Who only took the flow'r he gave ! |