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Think of the part the Jew has played Moses giving the world its morality, Jesus its religion, Isaiah its millennial visions, Spinoza its cosmic philosophy, Ricardo its political economy, Karl Marx and Lassalle its socialism, Heine its loveliest poetry, Mendelssohn its most restful music, Rachael its supreme acting and then think of the stock Jew of the American comic papers!
If we may judge by the extracts at present before us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, who had attempted to combine the theology of the Cabbala with the very little which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza; and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections upon them are of interest to any human being.
Most people have heard of the 'Harmonie Pré-établie' of Leibnitz; it is borrowed without acknowledgment from Spinoza, and adapted to the Leibnitzian philosophy. 'Man, says Leibnitz, 'is composed of mind and body; but what is mind and what is body, and what is the nature of their union?
This ever-present, all-pervading Intellect is God, who lives in all things, even such as seem not to live; that every thing is ready to become organized, to burst into life. God is, therefore, "the One Sole Cause of Things," "the All in All." Bruno may hence be considered among philosophical writers as intermediate between Averroes and Spinoza.
And there were many competent and brilliant men and women there, whose attainments not only qualified them amply for the tasks they then assumed, but have since made them prominent in American letters and journalism. Mr. Ripley lectured on modern philosophy to all who desired an acquaintance with Spinoza, Kant, Cousin, and their compeers. George P. Bradford was a thorough classical scholar.
This does not in the least diminish his brilliant merit; it is only one of those changes of direction in which the history of ideas abounds. All the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes. Port-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.
Thank God, that those who preach the opposite doctrine belie it so often by a happy inconsistency; that he who declares self-interest to be the mainspring of the world, can live a life of virtuous self-sacrifice; that he who denies, with Spinoza, the existence of free- will, can disprove his own theory, by willing, like Spinoza, amid all the temptations of the world, to live a life worthy of a Roman Stoic; and that he who represents men as the puppets of material circumstance, and who therefore has no logical right either to praise virtue, or to blame vice, can shew, by a healthy admiration of the former, a healthy scorn of the latter, how little his heart has been corrupted by the eidola specus, the phantoms of the study, which have oppressed his brain.
There is a group of propositions in the last part of the Ethic, which, although they are difficult, it may be well to notice, because they were evidently regarded by Spinoza as helping him to the end he had in view. The difficulty lies in a peculiar combination of religious ideas and scientific form. These propositions are the following:
In this particular, as well as in most others, Spinoza merely reproduces the error of the ancient Stoics.
It was only by a scandalous heresy that Spinoza could so change the idea of God as to make him indifferent to his creatures; and this transformation, in spite of the mystic and stoical piety of its author, passed very justly for atheism; for that divine government and policy had been denied by which alone God was made manifest to the Hebrews.
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