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Updated: June 18, 2025
Also, in letters written that same year to William Blyenbergh one finds expressed some of the chief conclusions published five years later in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. And Spinoza wrote, at this early period, not conjecturally or speculatively, but as one writes who knows the firm and tested grounds of his belief.
After the perusal of the "Tractatus de Opere" it is, in fact, impossible to admit that Suarez held any opinion respecting the origin of species, except such as is consistent with the strictest and most literal interpretation of the words of Genesis. For Suarez, it is Catholic doctrine, that the world was made in six natural days.
Benedicti de Spinoza Tractatus de Deo et Homine ejusque Felicitate Lineamenta. Atque Annotationes ad Tractatum Theologico-Politicum. Edidit et illustravit EDWARDUS BOEHMER. Halæ ad Salam. J. F. Lippert. 1852. This little volume is one evidence among many of the interest which continues to be felt by the German students in Spinoza.
Not a single one of them is classical, not one printed; Aquinas, Bernard, Anselm, Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Chrysostom in Latin, Vincent de Beauvais, Summa Bibliorum, Tractatus de scaccario moralis iuxta mores hominum, Exempla de animalibus. The Prior's outlook was very different from the Bishop's.
Let the Salvationist chiefs occupy themselves instead with mastering the principles of Spinoza's 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Colenso's 'Pentateuch, and, thrown into the bargain, Sir G. B. Airey's essay on 'The Earlier Hebrew Scriptures. One piece of information, however, in no small degree consoled me for that terrible nightmare of the Salvation Army on the banks of the Tarn.
His "Ethics" and "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" constitute a system of philosophy which has had no little influence on modern thought. He printed a book called "The Deist's Manual." I think I may assert, without the least partiality, that it is a treatise wholly devoid of wit or learning, under the most violent and weak endeavours and pretences to both.
We do not object merely to the geometrical form of his reasoning, that is a mere accessory, and one which renders the "Ethica" much more dry and less attractive than the "Tractatus," in which he gives free scope to his subtle intellect, unfettered by any such artificial plan, but we object to the essential nature of his system, to the a priori and deductive method by which he attempts to solve some of the highest problems of philosophy respecting God, Nature, and Man.
Only in quite recent years has some advance been made back to the sane naturalistic conception of morals which is found in the Greeks and also in Spinoza. It is a fundamental point with Spinoza that the ceremonial law, as he puts it in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, can at best secure man wealth and social position. Man's highest blessedness can be secured by the divine law of Nature alone.
Were the whole truth known, it might be found that there is a shameful exaggeration of the vices of Roman Emperors: this looks most probable when we consider the significant reflections made about Princes in one of his miscellaneous productions, by the historian, David Hume, not the David Hume, minor, who, living a long time among the English, and becoming fascinated with their ways, manners, customs and civilization, mooted the union of England and Scotland, more than a hundred years before the great event came off, in that famous historical essay printed in London in 1605 and entitled "De Unione Insulae Britanniae Tractatus;" nor David Hume minimus, who wrote the "History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus" but the David Hume, major, who wrote the "History of England" that "there are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries nearly two hundred absolute princes, great and small in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand monarchs, or 'tyrants, as the Greeks would have called them, yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors."
In spite of this positive testimony, and the absence of any utterances of manifest heresy, divers writers in the succeeding century classed him with the unbelievers. Dr. Samuel Parker in his Tractatus de Deo, published in 1678, includes him amongst the atheistical philosophers; but a perusal of the Doctor's remarks leaves the reader unconvinced as to the justice of such a charge.
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