Spinoza Sentence Examples

Every moment one expects to find Descartes saying with Hobbes that man's thought has created God, or with Spinoza and Malebranche that it is God who really thinks in the apparent thought of man.

Christoph Wittich (1625-1687), professor at Duisburg and Leiden, is a representative of the moderate followers who professed to reconcile the doctrines of their school with the faith of Christendom and to refute the theology of Spinoza.

The chief names in this advanced theology connected with Cartesian doctrines are Ludwig Meyer, the friend and editor of Spinoza, author of a work termed Philosophia scripturae interpres (1666); Balthasar Bekker, whose World Bewitched helped to discredit the superstitious fancies about the devil; and Spinoza, whose Tractatus theologico-politicus is in some respects the classical type of rational criticism up to the present day.

Against this work and the Ethics of Spinoza the orthodox Cartesians (who were in the majority), no less than sceptical hangers-on like Bayle, raised an all but universal howl of reprobation, scarcely broken for about a century.

For an account of the metaphysical doctrines of Descartes, in their connexions with Malebranche and Spinoza, see Cartesianism.

The metaphysics of Aristotle, the ethics of Spinoza, the philosophical works of Cicero, and many kindred works, were also frequent subjects of study.

He was thus important as the precursor of Malebranche and Spinoza.

Malebranche gave all causation to God; and the acosmist - as Hegel called him, in repudiation of Bayle's nickname " atheist " - Spinoza, from the premises of Carte.

Really, he urged, there could be only one substance - Descartes himself had dropped a passing hint to that effect - and the bold deductive reasoning of Spinoza's Ethics, in process if not in result, betrays its kinship to the ontological argument, with its affirmation of what must be.

Leib nitz's Monadology - which has little influence on his theism - may be viewed as a strong recoil from Spinoza's all-swallowing substance.

In Spinoza's pantheistic theory of the world, which regards thought and extension as but two sides of one substance, the problem of becoming is submerged in that of being.

Although Spinoza's theory attributes a mental side to all physical events, he rejects all teleological conceptions and explains the order of things as the result of an inherent necessity.

To Spinoza (as Kuno Fischer observes) man differs from the rest of nature in the degree only and not in the kind of his powers.

So far Spinoza approaches the conception of evolution.

Pollock has taken pains to show how nearly Spinoza approaches certain ideas contained in the modern doctrine of evolution, as for example that of sell-preservation as the determining force in things.

Spinoza abounds in the same sense, and is as usual perfectly candid " Naturae leges et regulae, secundum quas omnia fiunt et ex unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eadem."

Caird wrote also an excellent study of Spinoza, in which he showed the latent Hegelianism of the great Jewish philosopher.

In him culminates the Jewish expression of the Spanish-Moorish culture; his writings had an influence on European scholasticism and contributed significant elements to the philosophy of Spinoza.

In that same year the Amsterdam community was faced by a serious problem in connexion with Spinoza.

They brought themselves into notoriety by excommunicating the philosopher - an act of weak self-defence on the part of men who had themselves but recently been admitted to the country, and were timorous of the suspicion that they shared Spinoza's then execrated views.

At the moment when Spinoza was publishing a system which is still a dominating note of modern philosophy, this other son of Israel was capturing the very heart of Jewry.

Pierre Poiret (1646-1719) exhibits a violent reaction against the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, and especially against its consequences in Spinoza.

Hegel therefore, to take an instance, can no more fitly be classed as a mystic than Spinoza can.

Thus Spinoza, identifying God and nature, declares " nothing happens in nature which is in contradiction with its universal laws.

His work, The Light of the Lord (`Or Adonai), deeply affected Spinoza, and thus his philosophy became of wide importance.

Spinoza derived from Crescas his distinction between attributes and properties; he shared Crescas's views on creation and free will, and in the whole trend of his thought the influence of Crescas is strongly marked.

Spinoza is a materialistic monist with an inconsistent touch of mysticism and a certain concession, more apparent than real, to the spiritual side of experience.

It is generally admitted that he had no accurate knowledge either of Spinoza, whose monism he advocated, or of Kant, whose critical philosophy he so fiercely attacked.

Since then many have held that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz were indebted to him for their main principles.

He attacked Leon of Modena's anti-Kabbalistic treatises, and as a result of his conflict with the Venetian Rabbinate left Italy for Amsterdam, where, like Spinoza, he maintained himself by grinding lenses.

Spinoza was excommunicated (July 16, 1656) for contempt of the law.

In 1703 Bengel left Stuttgart and entered the university of Tubingen, where, in his spare time, he devoted himself specially to the works of Aristotle and Spinoza, and in theology to those of Philipp Spener, Johann Arndt and August Franke.

His knowledge of the metaphysics of Spinoza was such that he was selected by one of the professors to prepare materials for a treatise De Spinosismo, which was afterwards published.

Determinism had other forms besides that of a crude materialism, and the direction that Malebranche succeeded in giving to speculation led only to the more complete denial of freedom and individuality in the all-devouring pantheism of Spinoza.

Thus Fichte, Spinoza, Jakob Boehme and the Mystics, and finally, the great Greek thinkers with their Neoplatonic, Gnostic, and Scholastic commentators, give respectively colouring to particular works.

It lay in the very nature of this thought that Spinoza should now offer himself to Schelling as the thinker whose form of presentation came nearest to his new problem.

They are not without value, indeed, as extended commentary on Spinoza.

There is no sign of any intimate knowledge of ancient or scholastic thought; to the doctrines of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Norris, the attitude is one of indifference or lack of appreciation, but the influence of Descartes and specially of Locke is evident throughout.

Thereupon Spinoza advanced a pantheism which supposed that bodies and souls are not, as Descartes thought, different substances, but merely attributes - the one the extension and the other the thought of one substance, Nature or God.

Taking the Aristotelian theory that a substance is a thing in Spinoza.

It remained, however, for Schelling to convert this parallelism into identity by identifying motion with the intelligence of God, and so to transform the pantheism of Spinoza into pantheistic idealism.

Leibnitz, again, having become equally dissatisfied with Cartesianism, Spinozism and the Epicurean realism of Gassendi, in the latter part of his life came still nearer than Spinoza to metaphysical idealism in his monadology, or half-Pythagorean,half-Brunistic analysis of bodies into monads, or units, or simple substances, indivisible and unextended, but endowed with perception and appetite.

The assertion of absolute substance by Spinoza incited Schelling and Hegel.

Hartmann has an affinity with all these predecessors, and with Spinoza, with whom he agrees that there is but one substance unaltered by the plurality of individuals which are only its modifications.

Lotze's metaphysics is thus distinguished from the theism of Newton and Leibnitz by its pantheism, and from the pantheism of Spinoza by its idealism.

Thus his pantheistic is also a teleological idealism, which in its emphasis on free activity and moral order recalls Leibnitz and Fichte, but in its emphasis on the infinity of God has more affinity to Spinoza, Schelling and Hegel.

If his starting-point recalls Herbart his method of arriving at the absolute recalls Spinoza.

Now, if " independent " means " existing alone " and unrelated the same thing could not be at once related and independent; and, taking substance as independent in that sense, Spinoza concluded that there could only be one substance.

The argument, therefore, for one substance in Spinoza's Ethics, and for one absolute, the Real, which is one substantially, in Bradley's Appearance and Reality, breaks down, so far as it is designed to prove that there is only one substance, or only one Real.

Bradley, however, having satisfied himself, like Spinoza, by an abuse of the word " independent," that " the finite is self-discrepant," goes on to ask what the one Real, the absolute, is; and, as he passed from Herbart to Spinoza, so now he passes from Spinoza to Kant.

Spinoza answered realistically that the one substance is both extended and thinking.

In modern times, Spinoza, by a mere mistake, changed the meaning of " substance " from " existing apart " to " existing alone," and consistently concluded that there is only one.

It produced a great effect upon many Jews; the Acta Pilati says that Pilate trembled when he heard of it, and, according to Bayle's Dictionary, Spinoza declared that if he were persuaded of its truth he would become a Christian.

This may be briefly illustrated by a comparison with the greatest of modern pantheists, Spinoza.

To explain the universe Spinoza proceeds to argue that God, though undetermined ab extra, is capable of infinite self-determination.

The pantheism of Spinoza, combining as it did the religious and the scientific points of view, had a wide influence upon thought and culture.

He investigated the early history of Christianity and penetrated more deeply than any contemporary thinker into the significance of Spinoza's philosophy.

It is remarkable that Hume does not appear to have been acquainted with Spinoza's analysis of the affections.

Like Schleiermacher he combined with the keenest logical faculty an intensely religious spirit, while his philosophical tendencies were in sympathy rather with Hegel than with Schleiermacher, and theosophic mysticism was more congenial to him than the abstractions of Spinoza, to whom Schleiermacher owed so much.

Entering the university of Leiden he took his degree in philosophy in 1689, with a dissertation De distinctione mentis a corpore, in which he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Hobbes and Spinoza.

Comparatively early in life he had found in Spinoza the philosopher who responded to his needs; Spinoza taught him to see in nature the "living garment of God," and more he did not seek or need to know.

Kant he by no means ignored, and under Schiller's guidance he learned much from him; but of the younger thinkers, only Schelling, whose mystic nature-philosophy was a development of Spinoza's ideas, touched a sympathetic chord in his nature.

If the philosophy of Spinoza provided the poet with a religion which made individual creeds and dogmas unnecessary and impossible, so Leibnitz's doctrine of predestinism supplied the foundations for his faith in the divine mission of human life.

These lectures, first printed separately, were afterwards published together under the title of A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, in opposition to Hobbes, Spinoza, the author of the Oracles of Reason, and other Deniers of Natural and Revealed Religion.

The materialism of Hobbes, the pantheism of Spinoza, the empiricism of Locke, the determinism of Leibnitz, Collins' necessitarianism, Dodwell's denial of the natural immortality of the soul, rationalistic attacks on Christianity, and the morality of the sensationalists - all these he opposed with a thorough conviction of the truth of the principles which he advocated.

That essence in the supreme case involves existence is a thought which comes to Spinoza more easily, together with the tradition of the ordo geometricus.

Spinoza could draw upon him for the notion of genetic definition.

A fundamental contrast to the school of Bacon and of Locke is afforded by the great systems of reason, owning Cartesian inspira tion, which are identified with the names of Spinoza and Leibnitz.

Spinoza's philosophy is expounded ordine geometrico and with Euclidean cogency from a relatively small number of definitions, axioms and postulates.

We know that we need to pass from what Spinoza terms experientia y oga,' where imagination with its fragmentary apprehension is liable to error and neither necessity nor impossibility can be predicated, right up to that which fictionem terminat - namely, intellectio.

And what Spinoza has to say of the requisites of definition and the marks of intellection makes it clear that insight comes with coherence, and that the work of method on the " inductive " side is by means of the unravelling of all that makes for artificial limitation to lay bare what can then be seen to exhibit nexus in the one great system.

When all is said, however, the geometric method as universalized in philosophy is rather used by Spinoza than expounded.

This device was never remote from the constructions of writers for whom the teaching of Spinoza and Leibnitz was an integral part of their intellectual equipment, Other modes of correlation, however, find favour also, and in some variety.

Fichte cannot be said to have developed a logic, but this rhythm of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, foreshadowed in part for Fichte in Spinoza's formula, " omnis determinatio est negatio," and significantly in Kant's triadic grouping of his categories, gave a cue to the thought of Hegel.

In a wide sense, the system of Hegel or the system of Spinoza may be cited as examples of what is meant.

For the same reason it is inadmissible to do more than mention the name of Spinoza here.

Spinoza realized the flaw in the division and preferred to postulate behind mind and matter a single substance (unica substantia) while Leibnitz explained the universe as a harmony of spiritual or semispiritual principles.

The name, variously written Espinoza, De Spinoza, D'Espinoza and Despinoza, probably points to the province of Leon as the previous home of the family; there are no fewer than five townships so called in the neighbourhood of Burgos.

Spinoza's mother died in 1638 when the boy was barely six years old, and his father in 1654 when he was in his twentysecond year.

Spinoza received his first training under the senior rabbi, Saul Levi Morteira, and Manasseh ben Israel, a theological writer of some eminence whose works show considerable knowledge of philosophical authors.

Latin, still the universal language of learning, formed no part of Jewish education; and Spinoza, after learning the elements from a German master, resorted for further instruction to a physician named Franz van den Ende, who eked out an income by taking pupils.

We do not know whether his influence was brought to bear in this sense upon Spinoza; but it has been suggested that the writings of Bruno, whose spirit of enthusiastic naturalism and fervid revolt against the Church would be especially dear to a man of Van den Ende's leanings, may have been put into the pupil's hand by the master.

Latin, at all events, Spinoza learned to use with correctness, freedom and force, though his language does not, of course, conform to classical canons.

A romance has woven itself round Spinoza's connexion with Van den Ende's household.

Spinoza, the story goes, fell in love with his fair instructress; but a fellow-student, called Kerkering, supplanted him in his mistress's affections by the help of a valuable necklace of pearls which he presented to the young lady.

She cannot, therefore, have been more than eleven, or twelve in 1656, the year in which Spinoza left Amsterdam; and as Kerckkrink was seven years younger than Spinoza, they cannot well have been simultaneous pupils of Van den Ende's and simultaneous suitors for his daughter's hand.

But, though the details of the story thus fall to pieces, it is still possible that in the five years which followed his retirement from Amsterdam Spinoza, who was living within easy distance and paid visits to the city from time to time, may have kept up his connexion with Van den Ende, and that the attachment may have dated from this later period.

This would at least be some explanation for the existence of the story; for Colerus expressly says that Spinoza "often confessed that he meant to marry her."

But there is no mention of the Van den Endes in Spinoza's correspondence; and in the whole tenor of his life and character there is nothing on which to fasten the probability of a romantic attachment.

The mastery of Latin which he acquired from Van den Ende opened up to Spinoza the whole world of modern philosophy and science, both represented at that time by the writings of Descartes.

Two so-called friends endeavoured, on the plea of doubts of their own, to lead him into a theological discussion; and, some of Spinoza's expressions being repeated to the Jewish authorities, he was summoned to give an account of himself.

Threats were equally unavailing, and accordingly on the 27th of July 1656 Spinoza was solemnly cut off from the commonwealth of Israel.

Warned by this that Amsterdam was hardly a safe place of residence for him any longer, Spinoza had already left the city before the sentence of excommunication was pronounced.

The pure morality and simple-minded piety of this community seem early to have attracted Spinoza, and to have won his unfeigned respect.

In this quiet retreat Spinoza spent nearly five years.

Like every Jew, Spinoza had learned a handicraft; he was a grinder of lenses for optical instruments, and was thus enabled to earn an income sufficient for his modest wants.

He was also fond of drawing as an amusement in his leisure hours; and Colerus had seen a sketch-book full of such drawings representing persons of Spinoza's acquaintance, one of them being a likeness of himself in the character of Masaniello.

Before their conclusion Spinoza had parted company from Descartes, and the leading positions of his own system were already clearly determined in his mind.

A kind of philosophical club had been formed, including among its members Simon de Vries, John Bresser, Louis Meyer, and others who appear in Spinoza's correspondence.

Originally meeting in all probability for more thoroughgoing study of the Cartesian philosophy, they looked naturally to Spinoza for guidance, and by and by we find him communicating systematic drafts of his own views to the little band of friends and students.

The manuscript was read aloud and discussed at their meetings, and any points remaining obscure were referred to Spinoza for further explanation.

An interesting specimen of such difficulties propounded by Simon de Vries and resolved by Spinoza in accordance with his own principles, is preserved for us in Spinoza's correspondence.

Being in good circumstances, he was anxious to show his gratitude to Spinoza by a gift of 2000 florins, which the philosopher half-jestingly excused himself from accepting.

De Vries died young, and would fain have left his fortune to Spinoza; but the latter refused to stand in the way of his brother, the natural heir, to whom the property was accordingly left, with the condition that he should pay to Spinoza an annuity sufficient for his maintenance.

The heir offered to fix the amount at 500 florins, but Spinoza accepted only 300, a sum which was regularly paid till his death.

It is at least certain, from a reference in Spinoza's first letter to Oldenburg, that such a systematic exposition was in existence before September 1661.1 There are two dialogues somewhat loosely incorporated with the work which probably belong to a still earlier period.

The Short Treatise is of much interest to the student of Spinoza's philosophical development, for it represents, as Martineau says, "the first landing-place of his mind in its independent advance."

The histories of philosophy may quite correctly describe his theory as the logical development of Descartes's doctrines of the one Infinite and the two finite substances, but Spinoza himself was never a Cartesian.

Early in 1661 Spinoza's host removed to Rhijnsburg near Leiden, the headquarters of the Collegiant brotherhood, and Spinoza removed with him.

The house where they lived at Rhijnsburg is still standing, and the road bears the name of Spinoza Lane.

There is no mention, for example, of Hobbes throughout Spinoza's political writing, and only one casual reference to him in a letter, although the obligation of the Dutch to the English thinker lies on the surface.

Accordingly, full weight must be allowed to the internal evidence brought forward by Sigwart, Avernarius and others to prove Spinoza's acquaintance with Bruno's writings.

Spinoza must, therefore, have unbosomed himself pretty freely to his visitor on the main points of his system.

From one of Oldenburg's early letters we learn that the treatise De intellectus emendation was probably Spinoza's first occupation at Rhijnsburg.

It is, in a manner, Spinoza's "organon" - the doctrine of method which he would substitute for the corresponding doctrines of Bacon and Descartes as alone consonant with the thoughts which were shaping themselves or had shaped themselves in his mind.

Spinoza meanwhile concentrated his attention upon the Ethics, and we learn from the correspondence with his Amsterdam friends that a considerable part of book i.

Though thus giving his friends freely of his best, Spinoza did not cast his thoughts broadcast upon any soil.

This pupil (probably Albert Burgh, who afterwards joined the Church of Rome and penned a foolishly insolent epistle to his former teacher) was the occasion of Spinoza's first publication - the only publication indeed to which his name was attached.

The book was revised by Dr Meyer for publication and furnished by him, at Spinoza's request, with a preface in which it is expressly stated that the author speaks throughout not in his own person but simply as the exponent of Descartes.

A Dutch translation appeared in the following year.4 In 1663 Spinoza removed from Rhijnsburg to Voorburg, a suburban village about 2 m.

It was probably at the suggestion of Huygens that he bent his steps towards Spinoza's lodging.

But, finding that it would be impossible to keep the authorship secret, owing to the numerous hands through which parts of the book had already passed, Spinoza determined to keep his manuscript in his desk for the present.

But, with such obvious exceptions, Spinoza claims complete freedom of expression for thought and belief; and he claims it in the interests alike of true piety and of the state itself.

Spinoza's position is based upon the thoroughgoing distinction drawn in the book between philosophy, which has to do with knowledge and opinion, and theology, or, as we should now say, religion, which has to do exclusively with obedience and conduct.

Spinoza undertakes to prove his case by the instance of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The greater part of the treatise is devoted to working out this line of thought; and in so doing Spinoza consistently applies to the interpretation of the Old Testament those canons of historical exegesis which are often regarded as of comparatively recent growth.

A translation into Dutch appears to have been proposed; but Spinoza, who foresaw that sucha step would only increase the commotion which was so distasteful to him, steadily set his face against it.

The same year in which the Tractatus was published Spinoza removed from his suburban lodging at Voorburg into the Hague itself.

This was the house afterwards occupied by Colerus, the worthy Lutheran minister who became Spinoza's biographer.

But the widow insisted on boarding her lodger, and Spinoza presently found the expense too great for his slender purse.

His friends came to visit him in his lodgings, as well as others attracted by his reputation - Leibnitz among the rest - and were courteously entertained, but Spinoza preferred not to accept their offers of hospitality.

Only once, it is recorded, did Spinoza's admirable self-control give way, and that was when he received the news of the murder of the De Witts by a frantic mob in the streets of the Hague.

John De Witt had been Spinoza's friend, and had bestowed a small pension upon him; he had Spinoza's full sympathy in his political aims. On receiving the news of the brutal murder of the two brothers, Spinoza burst into tears, and his indignation was so roused that he was bent upon publicly denouncing the crime upon the spot where it had been committed.

Not long after Spinoza was himself in danger from the mob, in consequence of a visit which he paid to the French camp. He had been in correspondence with one Colonel Stoupe, a Swiss theologian and soldier, then serving with the prince of Conde, the commander of the French army at Utrecht.

From him Spinoza received a communication enclosing a passport from the French commander, who wished to make his acquaintance and promised him a pension from the French king at the easy price of a dedication to his majesty.

Spinoza went to Utrecht, but returned without seeing Conde, who had in the meantime been called elsewhere; the pension he civilly declined.

There may have been nothing more in the visit than is contained in this narrative; but on his return Spinoza found that the populace of the Hague regarded him as no better than a spy.

The town was full of angry murmurs, and the landlord feared that the mob would storm his house and drag Spinoza out.

Spinoza quieted his fears as well as he could, assuring him that as soon as the crowd made any threatening movement he would go out to meet them, "though they should serve me as they did the poor De Witts.

In 1673 Spinoza received an invitation from the elector palatine to quit his retirement and become professor of philosophy in the university of Heidelberg.

But Spinoza's experience of theological sensitiveness led him to doubt the possibility of keeping on friendly terms with the established religion, if he were placed in a public capacity.

As the commotion seemed to grow worse instead of subsiding, Spinoza consigned the manuscript once more to his desk, from which it was not to issue till after his death.

When they came back Spinoza was no more; he had died about three in the afternoon with Meyer as the only witness of his last moments.

Spinoza was buried on the 25th of February "in the new church upon the Spuy, being attended," Colerus tells us, "by many illustrious persons and followed by six coaches."

Spinoza's effects were few and realized little more than was required for the payment of charges and outstanding debts.

His desk, containing his letters and his unpublished works, Spinoza had previously charged his landlord to convey to Jan Rieuwertz, a publisher in Amsterdam.

They were furnished with a preface written in Dutch by Jarig Jellis, a Mennonite friend of Spinoza's, and translated into Latin by Dr Meyer.

The obloquy which thus gathered round Spinoza in the later years of his life remained settled upon his memory for a full hundred years after his death.

Hume's casual allusion to "this famous atheist" and his "hideous hypothesis" is a fair specimen of the tone in which he is usually referred to; people talked about Spinoza, Lessing said, "as if he were a dead dog."

Lessing, Goethe, Herder, Novalis and Schleiermacher, not to mention philosophers like Schelling and Hegel, united in recognizing the unique strength and sincerity of Spinoza's thought, and in setting him in his rightful place among the speculative leaders of mankind.

Spinoza's personal appearance is described by Colerus from the accounts given him by many people at the Hague who knew him familiarly.

This portrait was photographed for Dr Martineau's Study of Spinoza.

In 1880 a statue was erected to Spinoza at the Hague by international subscription among his admirers, and more recently the cottage in which he lived at Rhijnsburg has been restored and furnished with all the discoverable Spinoza relics.

Spinoza's philosophy is a thoroughgoing pantheism, which has both a naturalistic and a mystical side.

God is thus the immanent cause of the universe; but of creation or will there can be no question in Spinoza's system.

To view things thus is to view them, according to Spinoza's favourite phrase, sub specie aeternitatis.

Spinoza's philosophy is fully considered in the article Cartesianism.

The first collected edition of Spinoza's works was made by Paulus in 1802; there is another by Gfrorer (1830), and a third by Bruder (1843-1846) in three volumes.

Land for the Spinoza Memorial Committee formed in Holland to celebrate the bicentenary of the philosopher's death appeared in 1882 and was reissued in three volumes in 1895.

The main authority for Spinoza's life is the sketch published in 1705, in Dutch, with a controversial sermon against Spinozism, by Johannes Colerus.

The English version, also dating from 1706, was reprinted by Sir Frederick Pollock at the end of his Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy (1880).

Duff's Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy (1903) are important contributions of more recent date.

Meinsma has recently brought to light a number of fresh details connected with Spinoza's life and increased our knowledge of his Jewish and Dutch environment.

Meinsma's Spinoza and en zijn Kring (1896) appeared in a German translation in 1909.

Unlike Spinoza (who was about fifteen at the time of Acosta's death), Acosta was not strong enough to stand alone.

When, again, he met Wordsworth in 1797, the two poets freely and sympathetically discussed Spinoza, for whom Coleridge always retained a deep admiration; and when in 1798 he gave up his Unitarian preaching, he named his second child Berkeley, signifying a new allegiance, but still without accepting Christian rites otherwise than passively.

Thus Campanella, though neither an original nor a systematic thinker, is among the precursors, on the one hand, of modern empirical science, and on the other of Descartes and Spinoza.

Its most valuable lessons to the world were preserved in Christianity; but the grand simplicity of its monism slumbered for fifteen centuries before it was revived by Spinoza.

In Amsterdam many Maranos found asylum; Spinoza was descended from such a family.

Dupin, and Jean Le Clerc (Clericus), of the orientalists John Lightfoot, John Spencer and Humphrey Prideaux, of John Mill, the collator of New Testament readings, and John Fell, furnished new materials for controversy; and the scope of Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus had naturally been much more fully apprehended than ever his Ethica could be.

The former symbolizes his metaphysical conception, which was suggested to him by his reading of Spinoza.

Between this and the next crescent of the Heeren Gracht sprang up, on the east, the labyrinthine quarter where for more than three centuries the large Jewish population has been located, and in the middle of which the painter Rembrandt lived (1640-1656) and the philosopher Spinoza was born (1632).

Certainly the most able metaphysician and the most influential religious thinker of America, he must rank in theology, dialectics, mysticism and philosophy with Calvin and Fenelon, Augustine and Aquinas, Spinoza and Novalis; with Berkeley and Hume as the great English philosophers of the 18th century; and with Hamilton and Franklin as the three American thinkers of the same century of more than provincial importance.

There is no such thing, we have said, as an individual fact; and the nature of any fact is not fully known unless we know it in all its relations to the system of the universe, or, in Spinoza's phrase, sub specie aeternitatis.

In two of these (A Letter to a Gentleman in Holland, and Motion essential to Matter), ostensibly an attack on Spinoza, he anticipated some of the speculations of modern materialism.

A conversation which he had held with Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of Spinoza's works.

Jacobi's next important work, David Hume fiber den Glauben, oder Idealismus and Realismus (1787), was an attempt to show not only that the term Glaube had been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the Letters on Spinoza, but that the nature of the cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed.

Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza's system Jacobi should first direct his criticism.

Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as the fundamental rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified facts to the more general and abstract conditions, we land ourselves, not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminate Nature, devoid of will or intelligence.

The best introduction to Jacobi's philosophy is the preface to the second volume of the Works, and Appendix 7 to the Letters on Spinoza's Theory.

They are not mere modifications of this cause or properties, as with Spinoza, - they are free forces having their power or spring of action in themselves, and this is sufficient for our idea of independent finite reality.

The deity of Spinoza and the Eleatics is a mere substance, not a cause in any sense.

The Nieuwe Kerk, or new church (first half 17th century), contains the tombs of the brothers De Witt and of the philosopher Spinoza.

Spinoza is further commemorated by a monument in front of the house in which he died in 1677.

This is Spinoza's theory of the infinitely infinite," the limiting notion of infinity being of a numerical, quantitative series, each term of which is a qualitative determination itself quantitatively little, e.g.

Descartes and Spinoza had speculated there; it had been the home of Erasmus and Grotius; it was now the refuge of Bayle.

The modern treatment of the problem from Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibnitz down to Kant is too much inwoven into the metaphysical systems of individual great philoso phers to afford the possibility of detailed treatment in the present article.

Spinoza is a convinced determinist regarding the will as necessarily determined by ideas.

So again the controversy that Clarke conducted with Spinoza, and afterwards with Leibnitz, was entirely confined to the metaphysical region.

Meantime he studied Spinoza and Plato, and was profoundly influenced by both, though he was never a Spinozist; he made Kant more and more his master, though he departed on fundamental points from him, and finally remodelled his philosophy; with some of Jacobi's positions he was in sympathy, and from Fichte and Schelling he accepted ideas, which in their place in his system, however, received another value and import.

This work is a severe criticism of all previous moral systems, especially those of Kant and Fichte, Plato's and Spinoza's finding most favour; its leading principles are that the tests of the soundness of a moral system are the completeness of its view of the laws and ends of human life as a whole and the harmonious arrangement of its subject-matter under one fundamental principle; and, though it is almost exclusively critical and negative, the book announces clearly the division and scope of moral science which Schleiermacher subsequently adopted, attaching prime importance to a "Giiterlehre," or doctrine of the ends to be obtained by moral action.

It is obvious that Plato, Spinoza and Kant had contributed characteristic elements of their thought to this system, and directly or indirectly it was largely indebted to Schelling for fundamental conceptions.

In his earlier essays he endeavoured to point out the defects of ancient and modern ethical thinkers, particularly of Kant and Fichte, Plato and Spinoza only finding favour in his eyes.

His great personal popularity, as the representative Swedish student, did not prevent him, however, from pursuing his studies, and he became an authority on Spinoza.

It was during his absence that the Amsterdam Rabbis excommunicated Spinoza, a catastrophe which would probably have been avoided had Menasseh - Spinoza's teacher - been on the spot.

Such are the half-hearted attempts at consistency in Cartesian thought, which eventually culminate in the pantheism of Spinoza (see Cartesianism).

Benedict Spinoza, the eminent Jewish pantheist (1632-1677), to whom miracle is impossible, revelation a phrase, and who renews pioneer work in Old Testament criticism, finds at least a fair measure of liberty and comfort in Holland (his birth-land).

His view of the relation of God to his creatures is held to foreshadow the pantheism of Spinoza.

The more elaborate work, Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder g über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen (1795), which, still remaining within the limits of the Fichtean idealism, however, exhibits unmistakable traces of a tendency to give the Fichtean method a more objective application, and to amalgamate with it Spinoza's more realistic view of things.

This connexion is something of an afterthought to distinguish from the potential contingency of the objectively possible the real contingency of the actual, for which the " cause or reason " of Spinoza 6 could not account.

But such deliberate hypocrisy was abhorrent to Spinoza's nature.

The written communications of his own doctrine referred to above belong to a period after Spinoza had removed from the neighbourhood of Amsterdam; but it has been conjectured that the Short Treatise on God, on Man, and his Wellbeing, which represents his thoughts in their earliest systematic form, was left by him as a parting legacy to this group of friends.

Consumption had been making its insidious inroads upon Spinoza for many years, and early in 1677 he must have been conscious that he was seriously ill.

Schleiermacher's fine apostrophe is well known, in which he calls upon us to "offer a lock of hair to the manes of the holy and excommunicated Spinoza."

Van Vloten's volume, published in 1862, Ad Benedicti de Spinoza opera quae supersunt omnia supplementum, is uniform with Bruder's edition, and contains the early treatise De deo et homine, the Treatise on the Rainbow, and several fresh letters.

This book, Dr Martineau's Study of Spinoza (1882) and Dr John Caird's Spinoza (1888), are all admirable pieces of work, and, as regards the philosophical estimate, complement one another.