Part 24

Many facts make it clear that, not only the genesis of polytheism but the long survival of it are sequences of primitive ancestor-worship. Eventually there result under favouring conditions a gravitation towards monotheism; and with this an advance towards unification of priesthood. The official proprietors of the deity who has come to be regarded as the most powerful or as the possessor of all power becomes established everywhere.

Likeness between ecclesiastical and political organisations when they have diverged is largely due to their community of origin. There results a hierarchy of sacerdotal functionaries analogous to the graduated system of political functionaries; then the agencies for carrying on celestial rule and terrestrial rule eventually begin to compete for supremacy; and there are reasons for thinking that the change from an original predominance of a spiritual power over the temporal power to ultimate subjugation of it is mainly due to the development of industrialism with the moral and intellectual changes involved.

PROSPECT

What may we infer will be the evolution of religious ideas and sentiments throughout the future? The development of those higher sentiments which no longer tolerate the ascription of inferior sentiments to a divinity, and the intellectual development which causes dissatisfaction with the crude interpretations previously accepted, must force men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First Cause as they have long since dropped the lower.

Those, however, who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs and sentiments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken from the old interpretation is added to the new. Or rather we may say that transference from one to the other is accompanied by increase; since for an explanation which has a seeming feasibility, science substitutes an explanation which, carrying us back only a certain distance, then leaves us in the presence of the avowedly inexplicable. The truth must grow ever clearer--the truth that there is an inscrutable existence everywhere manifested to which the man of science can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of AN INFINITE AND ETERNAL ENERGY, from which all things proceed.

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA

Ethics

Baruch (Lat. Benedict) Spinoza, or de Spinoza, as he afterwards signed himself, son of a wealthy Portuguese Jew, was born at Amsterdam, November 24, 1632, and died at the early age of forty-four, on February 21, 1677. He was educated to the highest pitch of attainment in Hebrew and Talmudist learning, and through delicacy of physical constitution devoted himself entirely to study, cultivating assiduously philosophy as well as theology, while not neglecting the physical sciences. Imbibing unorthodox views he was formally excommunicated from the synagogue, and philosophy henceforth became the sole pursuit of his mind. He was able, however, through his great scientific accomplishments and mechanical skill, to gain a sufficiency for his subsistence by polishing lenses. This accomplished man was also no mean artist, especially in designing. He was one of the finest Latinists of his time. He was filled with the spirit of religion, and lived the simplest life, on a few pence a day, in a period of voluptuous epicureanism. The philosophical system of Spinoza was evolved from that of Descartes, who had sought to inaugurate a new era in thought. But he sought more clearly to demonstrate the existence of God than did his great French master. No philosopher has been more maligned on the one hand, or more adulated on the other, than this great Jewish genius. Spinoza has been by some nicknamed Pantheist or Atheist; while Schleiermacher and other theologians have not hesitated to describe him as "pious, virtuous, God-intoxicated."

I.--Concerning God

By God I understand absolutely infinite Being, that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each expressing eternal and definite essence. If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God does not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not involve existence, which is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

God is absolutely the first cause. He acts from the laws of His own nature only, and is compelled by no one. For outside of Himself there can be nothing by which He may be determined to act. Therefore He acts solely from the laws of His own nature. And therefore also God alone is a free cause.

The omnipotence of God has been actual from eternity and will be actual from eternity. The Divine intellect is the cause of things, both of their essence and of their existence. Thus it is the cause both of the essence and of the existence of the human intellect, but it differs from our intellect both in essence and in existence. The same may be said of the Divine will and the human will.

The will cannot be called a free cause, but can only be termed necessary. The will is only a certain mode of thought, like the intellect. It requires a cause to determine it to action, and therefore cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause. Hence it follows that God does not act from freedom of the will. For the will, like all other things, needs a cause to determine it to act in a certain manner. Things could have been produced by God in no other manner or order than that in which they have been. Things have been created by God in absolute perfection, because they have necessarily followed from His absolutely perfect nature.

The Divine Power and Decree

Since in eternity there is no when, nor before, nor after, God cannot decree nor could He have ever decreed anything other than He has decreed in the perfection of His nature. For if He had decreed something else about creation, He would necessarily have had an intellect and a will different from those He now has. Could such a supposition be allowed, why cannot He now change His decree about creation yet remain perfect?

All things depend on the Divine power; but God's will, because of his perfection, cannot be other than it is, and therefore things cannot be differently constituted. For to suppose otherwise is to subject God to fate, an absurdity which is not worth waste of time to refute.

The sum of the matter is that God necessarily exists; that He is one God; that He acts from the necessity of His nature; that He is the free cause of all things; that all things depend on Him; and that all things have been predestined by Him.

II.--Concerning Mind

I pass on to those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of the eternal and infinite God.

Thought is the attribute of God. Individual thoughts are modes expressing the nature of God in a certain and determinate manner. The order and connection of these ideas coincides with the order and connection of things, therefore God's power of thinking is equal to His power of acting. The circle existing in nature and the idea of an existing circle which is also in God, are one and the same thing, exhibited through different attributes. God is truly the cause of things as they are in themselves, in so far as He consists of infinite attributes.

The first thing which forms the actual Being of the human mind is nothing else than the idea of an individual actually existing. The essence of man is formed by certain modes of the Divine attributes, that is to say, modes of thought. The idea is the first thing which forms the Being of the human mind. It must be an idea of an individual thing actually existing. Hence the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God.

The knowledge of everything which happens necessarily exists in God, in so far as He forms the nature of the human mind. Man thinks. Modes of thought, such as love, desire, or affections of the mind under whatever designation, do not exist, unless in the same individual exists an idea of a thing loved, desired, etc. But the idea may exist though no other mode of thinking exists. Therefore the essence of man does not necessarily involve existence.

We perceive that a body is affected in certain ways. No individual things are felt or perceived by us except bodies and modes of thought.

The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, or a certain mode of actually existing extension, and nothing else. For if the body were not the object of the human mind, the ideas of the affections of the body would not be in God, in so far as He has created our mind, but would be in Him in so far as He has formed the mind of another thing.

But we have ideas of the affections of the body; therefore the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body actually existing. It follows that man consists of mind and body, and that the human body exists as we perceive it.

Mind and Body

Hence we perceive not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also what is to be understood by the union of mind and body. But no one can adequately comprehend it without previously possessing adequate knowledge of the body. In proportion as one body is better adapted than another to act or suffer, the mind will at the same time be better adapted for perception. And the more independent a body may be of other bodies, the stronger will be the understanding of the mind. Thus we can determine the superiority of one mind over another.

All bodies are either moving or resting. Every body moves sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Bodies are distinguished from each other by degrees of motion and quiescence, not with regard to substance. All bodies agree in some aspects. Bodies affect each other in motion and rest. Each individual thing must necessarily be determined as to motion or rest by some other thing.