Note 112 — Chapter XV · FRENCH AND DUTCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Still more profound, probably, was the effect of the posthumous Ethica (1677), which he had been prevented from publishing in his lifetime,112 and which not only propounded in parts an absolute pantheism (= atheism113), but definitely grounded ethics in human nature. If more were needed to arouse theological rage, it was to be found in the repeated and insistent criticism of the moral and mental perversity of the defenders of the faith114—a position not indeed quite consistent with the primary teaching of the treatise on the subject of Will, of which it denies the entity in the ordinary sense. Spinoza was here reverting to the practical attitude of Bacon, which, under a partial misconception, he had repudiated; and he did not formally solve the contradiction. His purpose was to confute the ordinary orthodox dogma that unbelief is wilful sin; and to retort the charge without reconciling it with the thesis was to impair the philosophic argument.115 It was not on that score, however, that it was resented, but as an unpardonable attack on orthodoxy, not to be atoned for by any words about the spirit of Christ.116 The discussion went deep and far. A reply to the Tractatus which appeared in 1674, by an Utrecht professor (then dead), is spoken of by Spinoza with contempt;117 but abler discussion followed, though the assailants mostly fell foul of each other. Franz Cuper or Kuyper of Amsterdam, who in 1676 published an Arcana Atheismi Revelata, professedly refuting Spinoza’s Tractatus, was charged with writing in bad faith and with being on Spinoza’s side—an accusation which he promptly retorted on other critics, apparently with justice.118