tatus Theologico-Politicus" is not formally based, but which are yet never absent from Spinoza's mind in the composition of any work, which breathe through all his works, and fill them with a peculiar effect and power, I wish, before concluding these remarks, to say a few words.

A philosopher's real power over mankind resides not in his metaphysical formulas, but in the spirit and tendencies which have led him to adopt those formulas. Spinoza's critic, therefore, has rather to bring to light that spirit and those tendencies of his author, than to exhibit his metaphysical formulas. Propositions about substance pass by mankind at large like the idle wind, which mankind at large regards not; it will not even listen to a word about these propositions, unless it first learns. what their author was driving at with them, and finds that this object of his is one with which it sympathizes, one, at any rate, which commands its attention.

And mankind is so far right that this object of the author is really, as has been said, that which is most important, that which sets all his work in motion, that which is the secret of his attraction for other minds, which, by different ways, pursue the same object.

Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe's great admiration for Spinoza, thinks that he finds it in Spinoza's Hebrew genius. "He spoke of God," says Mr. Maurice, "as an actual being, "to those who had fancied him a name "in a book. The child of the circum"cision had a message for Lessing and "Goethe which the pagan schools of "philosophy could not bring." This seems to me fanciful. An intensity and impressiveness, which came to him from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no doubt has; but the two things which are most remarkable about him, and by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed Goethe, seem to me not to come to him from his Hebrew nature at all-I mean his denial of final causes, and his stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but active. For a mind like Goethe's-a mind profoundly impartial and passionately as

piring after the science, not of men only, but of universal nature-the popular philosophy which explains all things by reference to man, and regards universal nature as existing for the sake of man, and even of certain classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, this philosophy would gladly maintain that the donkey exists in order that the invalid Christian may have donkey's milk before breakfast; and such views of nature as this were exactly what Goethe's whole soul abhorred. Creation, he thought, should be made of sterner stuff; he desired to rest the donkey's existence on larger grounds. More than any philosopher who has ever lived, Spinoza satisfied him here. The full exposition of the counter-doctrine to the popular doctrine of final causes is to be found in the Ethics; but this denial of final causes was so essential an element of all Spinoza's thinking that we shall, as has been said already, find it in the work with which we are here concerned, the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,' and, indeed, permeating that work and all his works. From the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" one may take as good a general statement of this denial as any which is to be found in the Ethics :

"Deus naturam dirigit, prout ejus "leges universales, non autem prout "humanæ naturæ particulares leges exi"gunt, adeoque Deus non solius humani generis, sed totius naturæ rationem "habet. (God directs nature, accord

order of minds whose admiration has made Spinoza's fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe and any man like Goethe, and then he composes him; first he fills and satisfies his imagination by the width and grandeur of his view of nature, and then he fortifies and stills his mobile, straining, passionate, poetic temperament by the moral lesson he draws from his view of nature. And a moral lesson not of mere resigned acquiescence, not of melancholy quietism, but of joyful activity within the limits of man's true sphere :—

...

...

"Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo unusquisque suum esse conservare "conatur. .. Virtus hominis est ipsa "hominis essentia, quatenus a solo conatu suum esse conservandi definitur. . . . "Felicitas in eo consistit quod homo 66 suum esse conservare potest. . . . "Lætitia est hominis transitio ad "majorem perfectionem. . . . Tristitia "est hominis transitio ad minorem per"fectionem. (Man's very essence is the "effort wherewith each man strives to "maintain his own being. . . . Man's Man's "virtue is this very essence, so far as it is "defined by this single effort to maintain "man's being. .. Happiness consists "in a man's being able to maintain his own being. Joy is man's passage "to a greater perfection. Sorrow "is man's passage to a lesser perfec❝tion.)"

It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand characteristic doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or truly Christian. His denial of final causes is essentially alien to the spirit of the Old Testament, and his cheerful and self-sufficing stoicism is essentially alien to the spirit of the New. The doctrine that "God directs nature, not according as the particular laws of human nature, but according as the universal laws of nature require," is at utter variance with that Hebrew mode of representing God's dealings, which makes the locusts visit Egypt to punish Pharaoh's hardness of heart, and the falling dew avert itself from the fleece of Gideon. The doctrine that "all sorrow is a passage to a lesser perfection' is at utter variance with the Christian

recognition of the blessedness of sorrow, working "repentance to salvation not to be repented of;" of sorrow which, in Dante's words, "remarries us to God." Spinoza's repeated and earnest assertions that the love of God is man's summum bonum do not remove the fundamental diversity between his doctrine and the Hebrew and Christian doctrines. By the love of God, he does not mean the same thing as the Hebrew and Christian religions mean by the love of God. He makes the love of God to consist in the knowledge of God; and, as we know God only through his manifestation of himself in the laws of nature, it is by knowing these laws that we love God, and the more we know them the more we love him. This be true, but may this is not what the Christian means by the love of God. Spinoza's ideal is the intellectual life; the Christian's ideal is the religious life. Between the two states there is all the difference which there is between the being in love, and the following, with delighted comprehension, a demonstration of Euclid. For Spinoza, undoubtedly, the crown of the intellectual life is a transport, as for the saint the crown of the religious life is a transport; but the two transports are not the same.

This is true; yet it is true, also, that by thus crowning the intellectual life with a sacred transport, by thus retaining in philosophy, amid the discontented murmurs of all the army of atheism, the name of God, Spinoza maintains a profound affinity with that which is truest in religion, and inspires an indestructible interest. "It is true," one may say to the wise and devout Christian, "Spinoza's conception of beatitude is not yours, and cannot satisfy you; but whose conception of beatitude would you accept as satisfying? Not even that of the devoutest of your fellowChristians. Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most inspired of devout souls, has given us, in his great picture of the Last Judgment,' his conception of beatitude. The elect are going round in a ring on long grass under laden fruit trees; two of them, more restless than

the others, are flying up a battlemented street-a street blank with all the ennui of the Middle Ages. Across a gulf is visible, for the delectation of the saints, a blazing caldron in which Beelzebub is sousing the damned. This is hardly more your conception of beatitude than Spinoza's is. But in my Father's house are many mansions;' only, to reach any one of these mansions, are needed the wings of a genuine sacred transport, of an immortal longing."" These wings Spinoza had; and because he had them he horrifies a certain school of his admirers by talking of "God" where they talk of "forces," and by talking of "the love of God" where they talk of "a rational curiosity."

One of these admirers, M. Van Vloten, has recently published at Amsterdam a supplementary volume to Spinoza's works, containing the interesting document of Spinoza's sentence of excommunication, from which I have already quoted, and containing, besides, several lately found works alleged to be Spinoza's, which seem to me to be of doubtful authenticity, and, even if authentic, of no great importance. M. Van Vloten (who, let me be permitted to say in passing, writes a Latin which would make one think that the art of writing Latin must be now a lost art in the country of Lipsius) is very anxious that Spinoza's unscientific retention of the name of God should not afflict his reader with any doubts as to his perfect scientific orthodoxy.

"It is a great mistake," he cries"to disparage Spinoza as merely one "of the dogmatists before Kant. By

"keeping the name of God, while he "did away with his person and cha"racter, he has done himself injustice. "Those who look to the bottom of "things will see that, long ago as he "lived, he had even then reached the "point to which the post-Hegelian philosophy and the study of natural "science has only just brought our own "times. Leibnitz expressed his appre"hension lest those who did away "with final causes should do away with "God at the same time. But it is in "his having done away with final causes, and with God along with them, "that Spinoza's true merit consists."

Now, it must be remarked, that to use Spinoza's denial of final causes in order to identify him with the Coryphæi of atheism is to make a false use of Spinoza's denial of final causes, just as to use his assertion of the all-importance of loving God to identify him with the saints would be to make a false use of his assertion of the allimportance of loving God. He is no more to be identified with the postHegelian philosophers than he is to be identified with St. Augustine. Nay, when M. Van Vloten violently presses the parallel with the post-Hegelians, one feels that the parallel with St. Augustine is the far truer one. Com

pared with the soldier of irreligion M. Van Vloten would have him to be, Spinoza is religious. His own language about himself, about his aspirations and his course, are true: his foot is in the vera vita, his eye on the beatific vision.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THIRTY years ago there was to be seen walking slowly almost at any time every day through the streets of Aberdeen a venerable old grey-headed man, of massive build and peculiarly dignified appearance, in handsome clerical costume ending in fine black-silk stockings, very erect in gait, and looking before him, or to the right and left, as he advanced, with an air of authority and portly courage. Had you followed him, you would have seen, by the respectful demeanour of those whom he met, that his authority was recognised. You would have seen hats touched to him, frankly or sheepishly, according to the rank and character of the owners; you would have seen heads turned to look after him; occasionally, if your powers of observation had been very sharp, you would have noticed, in some streetgroup of the idler and more lowering sort, a look of uneasiness at beholding him approaching, a disposition to break up and turn down any convenient court or cross-street so as to avoid him, or, if that could not be, a feeling of relief when he had passed and had not administered to them a gratuitous blowing-up. Among the children, on the contrary, you would have seen a wonderful attraction towards him, a wonderful habit of finding out by rumour among themselves when he was anywhere near, and of gathering from the side-streets or even from the houses so as to place themselves in his way. Their manner, or at least that of the boys, was to place themselves, three or four together, a few feet in advance of him on the pavement, and to wait stock-still with their caps off till he came up, when invariably he put his hand on each little waiting

head with this word of blessing, "Be all good," "Be all good." In any of the more crowded thoroughfares his walk was a regular succession of these kindly Be-all-goods and pattings of young heads; and such mystic virtue was supposed to lie in the Doctor's blessing and head-patting that little rogues have been known to secure a double share of it fraudulently by bolting off after the first Be-all-good, running hastily round a few streets, and placing themselves a second time in the Doctor's way, with all imaginable gravity, so as to be Be-all-gooded over again. But this was felt to be a bold act; and what might be the consequences if the Doctor, who was very wide-awake, should detect one filching a second blessing from him on false pretences, was a thought of some alarm.

The title of "The Doctor," which I have already given to this local worthy, was one specially his. Doctors of various kinds were plentiful enough in the town, then as now; but, if you had spoken of "The Doctor," then, unless the context had implied that you were speaking of the particular medical man attending some case, you would have been understood at least in that large quarter of the town which saw most of him-to mean the Rev. Dr. Kidd. By that fuller designation which he himself liked to use on formal occasions, he was "James Kidd, D.D., L.L.O.O.P."; and portraits of him, in his clerical gown and bands, with this designation underneath, in facsimile of his own elegant and flowing handwriting, were common enough in the booksellers' windows in the town, and in the houses of private families. Copies of these portraits,

either by themselves, or prefixed to certain books which the doctor had written, had even travelled out of Aberdeen into parts where the rumour of him had spread; and, latterly, local sculpture took possession of him, and produced a life-size bust, copies of which in plaster were bought by even poor people out of affection for the original. I remember one of these busts which, to prevent the effects of dust upon it in its pure white state, the family possessing it had caused to be painted jetblack. The "D.D., L.L.O.O.P." did not appear, of course, on the busts, but only in the engraved portraits. The last five letters of this designation expressed (according to the device in such cases of signifying a plural by the reduplication of a letter) one of the two official capacities in which the Doctor was and had long been known in Aberdeen-Linguarum Orientalium Professor, or Professor of Oriental Languages in Marischal College. But, though actually fulfilling the duties of this office, and teaching Hebrew every wintersession to considerable classes of divinity-students congregated in Marischal College from the whole north of Scotland, Dr. Kidd was far better known to the community at large in his other and more popular capacity as minister of Gilcomston Chapel-a very large, plain, square-built place of worship in the north-west of the town, and the centre of what was in fact a large parish, although nominally it had not then the full rights of a parish, but was an ecclesiastical district cut out of the vast parish of Old Machar. Though, as minister of such a "chapel of ease to one of the parishes of the Presbytery, Dr. Kidd had not a seat in the Presbytery, he was, to all intents and purposes, a coPresbyter of the city-clergy, and, in popular repute, more illustrious in his way, more a king in the place, than all the rest put together. For one thing, the congregation of Gilcomston Chapel was the largest in the neighbourhood, perhaps the largest in the whole of Scotland; and, as minister of this congregation, even though it consisted

mainly of the poorer and respectable middle sort-as holding it together by his influence, and giving it celebrity far and near by the wonderful three sermons with which he roused it every Sabbath, and of which stray comers might have the benefit if they did not object to standing in the passages among the red-cloaked old women and the poor old men who statedly occupied the stools and benches there and hung on the Doctor's lips-if only as minister of such a congregation, Dr. Kidd was no ordinary local power, but the head of a constituency whose enthusiasm for him would, if necessary, have swamped the rest of the town in his behalf. But there was no such necessity. Although it was the Gilcomston district that mustered immediately round him and swore by him daily in all things, the whole town looked at him fondly in the streets, and felt a kind of property in him. In other parts of the country he was known as "Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen"; and, had the dimensions of Gilcomston Chapel and the distances of the town allowed it, I verily believe that the reality would have corresponded with the name, and that at least the whole populace of the place-using that word to exclude the wealthy, the fastidious in habit, and the lovers of theology only in its colddrawn forms-would have belonged to Kidd's congregation. At all events, the children all through the town, no matter in what parish or locality, gathered round his footsteps for his well-known blessing. To young and old no living figure in the town was so familiar as his. No man was perhaps ever known by sight to all London except the Duke of Wellington, whose nose and face of white bone proclaimed him even where he had never been seen before. By no such inference from his portraits, but by repeated actual vision of his portly figure and his handsome silk-stockings, his white face that must have once had much of the sanguine in it, and that even in his old age was full and wellfleshed rather than bony, his amorphous rather than aquiline nose, his white hair now thinned to baldness at and over the