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Updated: May 28, 2025
It is not true that in Spinoza's God there is so little that is positive that it is not worth preserving. All Nature is in Him, and if the objector is sincere he will confess that it is not the lack of contents in the idea which is disappointing, but a lack of contents particularly interesting to himself.
You take an Ego, by preference yourself; convert it into a proposition; negate it, affirm it, negate it again, and so on ad infinitum, until you get out the whole Universe in the likeness of yourself. But that's rather a difficult method; probably you would prefer Spinoza's. You take " "No!" cried Dennis, "there I protest! Spinoza is too venerable a name."
Especially did he object to the Church extending its prohibitive power over men's thinking. It is the business of the Church to inculcate "obedience" in the masses; not to dictate to philosophers what is the truth. The fundamental purpose of Spinoza's attack upon the Bible is to free philosophy from theology; not to destroy the Church but to disestablish it.
Allanson Picton, who tells us that one, if not more, of Spinoza's fundamental conceptions "have increasingly repelled rather than attracted religious people." It is the object of the present chapter to show why this must be the case, wherever the implications of his teaching are understood.
And the bookseller's smile answered Spinoza's. "He bade me despatch copies of the Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae to sundry persons of distinction. I would to Heaven thou wouldst write a new book!"
It was Spinoza, also, who first convincingly showed that other of the Scriptural documents were compiled by various unacknowledged scribes; not by the authors canonized by orthodoxy, Jewish or Gentile. The wealth of philological and historical material at the disposal of the contemporary Biblical investigator is incomparably richer than it was at Spinoza's time.
In opposition to this Kuno Fischer has defended, and in the main successfully, the proposition that Spinoza reached, and must have reached, his fundamental pantheism by his own reflection as a development of Descartes's principles. The traces of his early Talmudic education, which have been noticed in Spinoza's works, prove no dependence of his leading ideas on Jewish theology.
So prevalent were the groundless rumors that the Lutheran pastor, Colerus the source of most of our information felt obliged in his very quaint summary biography to defend the life and character of Spinoza. To his everlasting credit, Colerus did this although he himself heartily detested Spinoza's philosophy which he understood to be abhorrently blasphemous and atheistic.
The tradition that is less sparing of Clara's age is, however, even more sparing of her character: the success of Spinoza's supposed rival a fellow-student by name, Kerkrinck is attributed to the seductive powers of a pearl necklace.
Such bliss, however, is only approximately attainable in moments of mystic transport. And when, as in so many experiences, we see only in part, and have inadequate ideas, faith in the Eternal Whole is needed to keep us from blasphemy. With such necessarily brief hints as to Spinoza's attitude towards evil, I resume his doctrine of man the individual creature as a centre of action.
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