its rationalistic criticism of Scripture, and because of its admirable defense of the freedom of thought and of speech; and his posthumously published 'Ethics' had already become known in manuscript to his more confidential friends, either as a whole or in part. In one or two instances only is Spinoza known to have shown an interest in the political events of that decidedly eventful time. In the slander and personal abuse to which malevolent critics often exposed his name he showed almost as little concern.

His health was throughout these years never very bad; but also, apparently, never robust. Without any previous warning by illness, so far as known to the family in whose house he lived, he died quite suddenly, February 21st, 1677. His 'Ethics' first received publication in his Posthumous Works' in the same year.

The philosophical doctrine of Spinoza belongs to the general class of what are called monistic theories of the universe. It is more or less dimly known to common-sense that the universe in which we live has some sort of deep unity about it. Everything is related, in some fashion or other, to everything else. For, not to begin with any closer ties, all material objects appear as in one space; all events take place in one time; and then if we look closer, we find far-reaching laws of nature, which, in surprising ways, bring to our knowledge how both things and events may be dependent in numerous ways upon facts that, as at first viewed, seem indefinitely remote from them. It is this apparent unity of natural things, obscurely recognized even in many superstitions of savage tribes, which, as it becomes more clearly evident, gives rise to the belief that one God created the world, and now rules all that is therein. But to refer every fact in the world to the will of the one Creator still leaves unexplained the precise relation of this God to his world. If he is one and the world is another, there remains a certain puzzling duality about one's view of things, -a duality that in the history of thought has repeatedly given place, in certain minds, to a doctrine that all reality is one, and that all diversity—or that in particular the duality of God and the world—is something either secondary, or subordinate, or unreal. The resulting monism has numerous forms. Sometimes it has appeared as a pure materialism, which knows no reality except that of the physical world, and which then reduces all this reality to some single type. In forms that are historically more potent, monism has appeared when it has undertaken to be what is called pantheistic. In this case monism regards the one Reality, not as the barely apparent physical world of visible or tangible matter, but as some deeper power, principle, substance, or mind, which in such doctrines is viewed as impersonal, and usually as unconscious, although its dignity or its spirituality is supposed to

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be such that one can call it Divine. One then views God and the world as forming together, or as lapsing into, the one ultimate Being. Of this Being one calls the physical universe a "show," or a "manifestation," or a more or less "illusory" hint, or perhaps an emanation." Of such pantheistic doctrines the Vedanta philosophy of the Hindoos is the classic representative; and very possibly, in large part, the ultimate historical source. In Greek philosophy the Eleatic school, and later the Stoics, and in one sense the Neo-Platonic doctrines, were representatives of pantheism. In unorthodox mediæval philosophy pantheism is well represented. It was not without its marked and important influence upon the formulation of even the orthodox scholastic philosophy. And as was remarked above, Spinoza drew some of the weapons which he wielded from the armory of orthodox scholasticism itself.

Spinoza's doctrine is the classical representative of pure pantheism in modern philosophy. God and the world are, for Spinoza, absolutely one. There is in reality nothing but God,-the Substance, the Unity with an infinity of attributes, the source whence all springs; but also the home wherein all things dwell, the "productive" or "generating" Nature, in whose bosom all the produced or generated nature that we know or that can exist, lives and moves and has its being. For all that is produced, or that appears, is only the expression, the incorporation, the manifestation, of the one Substance; and has no separate being apart from this Substance itself. Moreover, all that is produced necessarily results from the nature of the one Substance. There is no contingency or free-will in the world.

So far Spinoza's doctrine, as thus stated, occupies on the whole the ground common to all pantheism. The special interest of this doctrine lies however in three features: first, in Spinoza's method of giving a proof for his doctrine; secondly, in his devices for explaining the seeming varieties that appear in our known world; and thirdly, in the application and use that he makes of his theory when once it has been expounded. The first of these topics concerns the student of philosophy rather than any one else, and must here be left out of account. Suffice it to say only that Spinoza, in his 'Ethics,' imitates the traditional form of Euclid's geometrical treatise,― starts with definitions, axioms, and the like, and proposes to give a rigid demonstration of every step of his argument; while as a fact, what he accomplishes is a very brilliant and skillful analysis, one-sided but instructive, of certain traditional (and largely scholastic) ideas about the ultimate nature of real Being. He naturally convinces no one who does not start with just his chosen group of traditional notions, emphasized in precisely his own fashion,-which differed, we need hardly say, from the old scholastic fashion. Yet his study

13791 is profoundly instructive; and is lighted up by numerous passing remarks, comments, and criticisms, of no small interest.

Grant however for the moment the central thesis of Spinoza's pantheism: suppose him to have proved that one Substance, called God, not only produces, but is all things: and then comes the question, always critical for any monistic view of the world, How can we apply this ultimate conception to explain the diversities of things as we see them? Above all, how reconcile with the mysterious unity of the Divine Substance the largest and most important diversity of the world as known to us men,- namely, the contrast between matter and mind? How can matter and mind be, and be so diverse as they seem, and yet manifest equally the nature of the one Real Being, God? and what are the true relations of matter and mind?

Spinoza's answer to this question has been of great historical importance. It has influenced much of the most recent speculation, and has played a part in the most modern discussions of psychology, of evolution, and in some cases of general physical science. Spinoza here asserted that the one Substance, being essentially and in all respects infinite, has to reveal the wealth of its nature in infinitely numerous attributes, or fundamental fashions of showing what it is and what it can express. Each of these attributes embodies, in its own independent way, and "after its own kind," the true nature of the Substance, and the whole true nature thereof, precisely in so far as the nature of each attribute permits. Of these infinitely numerous attributes, two are known to man. They are extension, or the attribute expressed in the whole world of material facts, and thought, or the attribute expressed in the whole world of mental facts. Each of these attributes of the Substance reveals in its own way, or after its own kind, and quite independently of the other attribute, the whole nature of the Substance. Each is infinite after its own kind, just as the Substance, which possesses the entire Reality and expresses itself in the attributes, is absolutely infinite. In other words, to adopt Taine's famous comparison, matter and mind are like two expressions, in two precisely parallel texts, of the same ultimate meaning; or together they form, as it were, a bilingual book, with text and interlinear translation. They are precisely parallel; but as to the succession of the single words in each, they are mutually independent. Each in its own way tells the whole truth as to what the Substance is, in so far as the Substance can be viewed now under this and now under that aspect,-i. e., now as Substance extended, and now as Substance thinking. Each attribute is text, each translation, yet neither interferes with the other. Accordingly, wherever there is matter there is mind, and vice versa. That this last fact escapes us ordinarily is due to the limitation of our natures. Our minds

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are part of the Divine Thought, just as our bodies are part of the Divine Extension. But we know directly only so much of mind as corresponds to our own bodily processes, viewed in their linkage and in their unity. Hence other bodies seem to us inanimate. As a fact, matter and mind are parallel and coextensive throughout the universe. On the other hand, although perfectly correspondent, inseparable, and parallel (for each is in its own way an expression of precisely the same Divine truth which the other expresses), matter and mind, close companions as they are, never causally affect each other; but each is determined solely by its own inner laws. Ideas cause ideas; bodies move bodies: but bodies never produce mental states, nor do thoughts issue in physical movements, even in case of our own bodies and minds. The appearance which makes this seem true, when our mind and bodies appear to interact, is due to the principle that "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things," owing precisely to the parallelism of the attributes. Hence just when a given physical state takes place in our bodies, the parallel idea, by virtue of the laws of mind, is sure to arise in our consciousness.

This theory of the independence and parallelism of mind and body has played, as we have said, a great part in more recent discussion; and survives, as the doctrine of the "psycho-physical parallelism,» in modern scientific discussions which are far removed in many respects from Spinoza's metaphysics.

The practical consequences of the system of Spinoza are worked out by the author in the later divisions of his 'Ethics,' in a manner which has become classic; although, as pointed out above, Spinoza's distinctive historical influence is due rather to his general theories. But as one way of telling the ancient tale of the wise man's life in God, the practical interpretation which Spinoza gives to monism may well stand beside the other classics of Stoical and of mystical lore. Since there is naught but God, and since in God there is fulfilled, in an impersonal but none the less perfect way, all that our thought aims to know, and all that even our blind passions mistakenly strive to attain, the wise man, according to Spinoza, enjoys an absolute "acquiescence" in whatever the infinite wisdom produces. God is absolute, and can lack nothing; hence apparent evil is a merely negative "deprivation" of good, a deprivation itself due only to our inadequate view,-i. e., only to error. Evil is, then, nothing positive. And the wise man, seeing all things in God, loves God with a love that is identical with God's love of his own perfection. For God, if not conscious in our fleeting way, has still the fulfillment of all that consciousness means, in the very perfection of his thinking attribute; so that our thoughts are God's very thoughts precisely in so far as

our thoughts are rational, complete, adequate, true. In other words, in so far as we are wise, we directly enter into the perfection of God himself.

Since thoughts of a very similar type have received a frequent expression in writings reputed orthodox, it is not surprising that many who easily fear the name pantheism have still been ready to reverence, in Spinoza, the spirit, profound if inadequate, which in such fashion embodies, in our philosopher's work, one of the most universal motives of piety.

Josial Royce.

THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING

FTER experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile,- seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would. affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. I say "I finally resolved"; for at first sight it seemed unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of something then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged to abandon the quest of such objects if I seriously devoted myself to the search for something different and new. I perceived that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former, I should necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were not so placed, and I gave them my whole attention, I should equally fail.

I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my life; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in vain. For the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men. (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed XXIII-863