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Spinoza made a great improvement in the system by attaching the mind more systematically to the body, and studying the parts which organ and object played in qualifying knowledge; but his conception of mental unities and mental processes remained literary, or at best, as we have seen, dialectical. No shadow of a principle at once psychic and genetic appeared in his philosophy.
And by the evil fruit we know the evil root: the idealistic theory is philosophical nihilism, for it denies the reality of the external world, as the materialism of Spinoza denies a transcendent God and the freedom of the will.
"Thou to come in and ask for Stoupe's book? 'Tis 'tis brazen!" Spinoza was perplexed. "Brazen? Is it because he talks of me in it?" "Heer Spinoza," said the bookseller solemnly, "thy Cartesian commentary has brought me a many pence, and if thou thyself hast browsed more than bought, thou wast welcome to take whatever thou couldst carry away in that long head of thine.
In both points it is wrong. The criterion of truth is insufficient, for Spinoza and Leibnitz built up their opposing theories the pantheism of the one and the monadology of the other from equally clear and distinct conceptions; tried by this standard individualism is just as true as pantheism.
Perhaps, after reading these transcendental essays of Emerson, we might borrow Goethe's language about Spinoza, as expressing the feeling with which we are left. "I am reading Spinoza with Frau von Stein. I feel myself very near to him, though his soul is much deeper and purer than mine.
Of course, this intellect might be that of a being infinitely superior to man, who would found the materiality of things at the same time that he bound them together: such was the hypothesis of Leibniz and of Spinoza. But it is not necessary to go so far, and, for the effect we have here to obtain, the human intellect is enough: such is precisely the Kantian solution.
He, moreover, confidently submits that, granting the existence of so utterly incomprehensible a Deity, still such Deity could not have caused nature, or matter, unless we deny the palpably true proposition of Spinoza, to wit Of things which have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of the other.
These are the marvellous personages on whom the esteem of contemporaries is lavished so long as they live, and to whom immortality is reserved after their death. And we have now invented the art of making their extravagances eternal, and thanks to the use of typographic characters the dangerous speculations of Hobbes and Spinoza will endure for ever.
"I observe first the universe of objects or of body; the sun, moon, and stars; the earth, seas, plants, animals, men, ships, houses, and other productions either of art or of nature. Here Spinoza appears, and tells me that these are only modifications and that the subject in which they inhere is simple, uncompounded, and indivisible.
Spinoza denies the existence of the Devil, and says, in the Short Treatise, that if he is the mere opposite of God and has nothing from God, he is simply the Nothing. But if a philosophical doctrine be true, it does not follow that as it stands it is applicable to practical problems.
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