to me the most obscure part of his philosophy both in itself and in relation to the rest. Perhaps Orientalists may have yet more to tell us on this head.

Most remarkable of all, perhaps, is Chasdai's thorough determinism. He explicitly denies that any event, whether depending on human choice or not, can be called possible or contingent in an absolute sense. It is inconceivable, he says, "that two men, being themselves of like temper and character, and having before them like objects of choice in like circumstances, should choose differently". Volitions are determined by motives as much as anything else in nature is determined. An act of free will is free in so far as it is not compelled, but necessary in so far as it is not uncaused. Reward and punishment are themselves parts of the necessary order of things, attached however by Providence, for reasons of policy, to those actions. which are free in the popular sense-that is, which are determined by a state of mind involving the love of God or its contrary. The argument on this topic seems to be fully worked out, and to deal with most of the points that have been made in later controversy on the subject. Chasdai holds fast, it must be remembered, to the idea of designed order in the universe, though final causes in the ordinary sense are as it were swallowed up in the absolute, self-sufficient necessity by which God's love manifests itself. Thus he cannot be regarded as a forerunner of Spinoza's system; Spinoza took the suggestions in detail and worked them into a systematic connexion of his own, which would probably have found little favour in Chasdai's eyes.

As to Descartes, Spinoza's philosophical relation to him has been so amply discussed that there is no occasion to dwell on it. I doubt, however, whether justice has been done to the scientific side of it. A clear grasp of physical conceptions and a careful avoidance of mistakes in physical science are prominent in Spinoza's work. That the spirit of exact science must go before the spirit of philosophy, if philosophy is to be more than a plaything, was a precept which Spinoza might learn from Descartes, and from him alone. I must add nevertheless that I do not agree with those (including Dr. Joël) who hold that Spinoza was at any time a Cartesian. All the evidence we have goes to show that such a time, if any, must have been exceedingly short. The early Essay on God and Man is little, if at all, more Cartesian than the Ethics in its general principles, though doubtless much more Cartesian in detail. The account of the passions follows pretty closely Descartes' Traité des Passions: yet the differences are already important. Of Descartes' elaborate physiological explanations there is not a word, an omission which we may

fairly interpret by the light of Spinoza's later criticism. Descartes asserts that all the passions are in themselves good, and only their excess is harmful; sorrow has its place no less than joy, and is even "en quelque façon première et plus nécessaire". Spinoza denies it even more sharply than in the Ethics, rejecting hope, fear, and all passions derived from them, as unworthy of a wise man's life.

As to the Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, I can see no sufficient reason for doubting Spinoza's own account of the circumstances under which that work was produced. He was unquestionably not a Cartesian when it was put into shape for publication; and if we may trust his own words, he was not so at the time of giving the private lessons that were the foundation of it (Ep. 9). In short, at the most important time of his growth Spinoza necessarily breathed a Cartesian atmosphere, just as a century and a half later he would have breathed a Kantian atmosphere but it is a long way from this to making out a case of subordination or even of direct descent.

When everything has been said about the sources of Spinoza's philosophy, or rather of the several elements combined in it, the whole remains as much his own as ever. Nothing more strongly shows its individuality than the extreme difficulty of making it fit into any of the usual classifications. It has been called by every possible name, but the more one considers it, the more it refuses to be put into any of the pigeon-holes labelled with words in ism. Every name is found to halt somewhere in the application except those which are too vague to convey any real information. There is no pleasure and small profit in discussing the various attempts of critics to mete Spinoza with their various little measures. is simpler to give the reader an earnest warning once for all not to take upon trust any statement, especially any hostile statement, of Spinoza's doctrines. The use of good expositions is to send one to the text; and this is eminently the case with Spinoza. I know of hardly any philosopher since Plato who loses so much in being reported at second-hand.*

It

The reader of the Ethics is startled almost at the threshold

The best general account is Kuno Fischer's. Of distinctly adverse critiques the best I know is Saisset's; for M. Paul Janet's excellent papers on Spinozism can hardly be classed under that head, though his philosophy is widely different from Spinoza's. One or two which have lately appeared in sectarian journals in this country are beneath serious notice. John Howe's Living Temple (1702) deserves remark as containing the The argument never gets beyond first English polemic against Spinoza. the definitions of substance and attribute. Howe shows no sign of really understanding Spinoza, and I suspect that he had not read more than the first Part of the Ethics.

many I believe are deterred-by the theory of the Attributes. This, if it is nothing else, is one of the most brilliant tours de force ever achieved in metaphysics. Looking at the matter in a purely scientific spirit, I suppose we must not approve tours de force on any terms. Yet it is impossible to refrain from admiring a flight of speculation which is guided in the very height of its daring by the finest possible sense of the dangers to be escaped on either hand. In the light of more recent controversies one is almost tempted to call it a prophetic tact. Those who maintain that the methods of scientific inquiry, if good for anything, are good for the whole field of human knowledge, have ever been assailed by the cuckoo cry of materialism. They are charged (in almost every case most unjustly) with seeking to reduce all being to that which can be touched and tasted and handled. Spinoza soars at one stroke to a height where this cackling is inaudible. The material world, or to speak with Spinoza, the world perceived under the attribute of extension, is complete in itself; the laws of matter and motion are our sole and sufficient guides to the understanding of it. But this is not the whole world. Extension is only co-ordinate with thought and with infinite other aspects under which existence may present itself to other intelligences than ours. Extension is not after the other attributes, but it is not before them. The universe in its conceivable though not imaginable fullness is infinitely beyond any sensible world. Whatever else Spinoza's system may be, it is not materialism or naturalism. We know, again, how many flying from the Charybdis of materialism have been wrecked on the Scylla of idealism. They have sought to bring the unruly world of things into subjection by making it out a mere creature of thought. They have turned the realities of common life into a phantom show deceiving the self that brought them forth. But a sure Nemesis awaits all such attempts to spurn the conditions of existence: the self thus made the measure of all things has at last no assurance of its own reality. The cure prescribed for materialism turns out to be the heroic remedy of absolute scepticism, and from this worst fate of all a fresh escape has to be sought in some violent assumption. A very few bold and honest speculators, such as Fichte, make their assumption openly, but as a rule it is more or less elaborately disguised. Spinoza saw the net spread for the tribe of modern idealists, and he would have nothing to do with a phantom universe. Extension is as real as thought, or rather they are one and the same reality. I am real in exactly the same sense that the world I live in is real, and we are each other's sureties, if the expression may be allowed, that the whole thing is not one vast illusion. It is needless to say however that this language is not Spinoza's;

the questions it suggests are nowhere explicitly discussed by him. For my own part I do not think any theory of perception can be satisfactory which treats man as a mere individual. I believe that a human being's assurance of the reality of things outside him is inseparably connected with his assurance of the reality of other people, and I half suspect that the latter really comes first. Some social feelings are probably inherited, and social feelings involve the belief that your fellow is as real as yourself. But to dwell on this would take us much too far from Spinoza.

The question remains, and is a fair one, whether Spinoza's metaphysic, though it steers clear of subjective idealism as well as of materialism, is not in some sense idealist after all. The infinite attributes-which are of no practical use, as our knowledge is limited to those of extension and thought-seem at first sight designed to avoid such a result. The ideal or psychical order of the universe is merely one of infinite orders, all strictly homologous with one another and with the ideal order, while differing in kind. So in plane geometry we may conceive figures similar and similarly situated to those we are dealing with to be repeated in an infinite number of planes other than the plane of the paper. But the descent from this conception to our finite experience is not made out. I do not mean only that no reason is given why finite things should exist at all, why there should be variety among them, why they should be as they are and not otherwise, and the like. That class of questions may well be put aside, and Spinoza did expressly put them aside, as being irrational (Ep. 72), and accordingly divers ingenious persons have first assumed that Spinoza meant to answer such questions, and have then proved, much to their own satisfaction, that he did not succeed in answering them. But the relation of thought to the other attributes remains obscure. Man is an extended and thinking being, and nothing else. How does Spinoza account for his being nothing else? What becomes of the infinite modes of other attributes corresponding to the mode of extension which is the human body? Spinoza seems to say that each of these has a finite mind to itself and that besides all these there is an idea or mode of thought* not in any finite mind (in infinito Dei intellectu) which in some way more eminently corresponds with all the homologous modes of the other attributes. This leads

* Idea in Spinoza's usage=mode of the Attribute cogitatio, not necessarily in a human or conscious mind. It would include Prof. Clifford's "elementary feeling" or "piece of mind-stuff".

+ Correspondence between Tschirnhausen and Spinoza (Ep. 67, 68). Spinoza's answer is only a fragment, and I must confess that after repeated

us into regions where articulate speech becomes impossible, and we can only manipulate symbols of imaginary quantities. Meanwhile the definition of Attribute is itself idealist in its language: "Per attributum intelligoid quod intellectus de substantia percipit tanquam eiusdem essentiam constituens". This seems to cut the ground from under the equality of the Attributes; and if they are not equal, their infinity will hardly serve its purpose. Now the insoluble puzzles we have just glanced at arise wholly from the infinity of the attributes in other words from the attempt to make the world of experience carry the burden of worlds beyond experience. The real working parts of Spinoza's system, which are naturally concerned only with the world we do know, remain substantially unimpaired when these brilliant but dangerous ornaments are given up. The conception of Substance and Attribute taken not merely from the definitions, but as we find it worked out in the second and third parts of the Ethics, leads to such a view of the relations of mind and matter as is now called Monism; and herein Spinoza's position is at least compatible with an idealist Monism such as my friend Professor Clifford has lately advocated. Some such conclusion, I believe, is that to which philosophy and science are now converging. The dualism of matter and mind is becoming not only inadequate but unthinkable. Mr. Lewes, Mr. Spencer, Professor Huxley-yea, the new Oxford school of Hegelians, though in a speech hard to understand-are all telling us the same story in their different ways. The greater part of what is denounced as scientific materialism" is only very good Monism. If any one expects to build up a soul out of soulless atoms, it is not Prof. Tyndall or Prof. Huxley. The life-potent atom of the Belfast address is not a piece of the old material substance of the schools. It is rather a monad instinct with its share, however lowly, of mind, soul, spirit, or whatsoever name may be given to that very certain reality which finds its highest known manifestation in the consciousness of civilised man. We can now less than ever admit a break in nature in either the material or the mental aspect of life: neither can we stop even at the old break between the organised and the unorganised world. It will one day be understood that Mr. Darwin has made materialism impossible. The people who still cry materialism may perhaps not find scientific idealism much more to their taste: but that is another matter.

Let us turn to Spinoza, and we shall find that the very keystone of his psychology is this principle of con

consideration I do not fully understand it. I doubt whether Spinoza was quite satisfied with it himself. See Ep. 72.