Philosophy (continued 4)

REPRESENTATIVE BODIES

How is the governmental influence of the people acquired? The primary purpose for which chief men and representatives are assembled is that of voting money. The revenues of rulers are derived at first wholly and afterwards partly from presents. This primary obligation to render money and service to the head of the State, often reluctantly complied with, is resisted when the exactions are great, and resistance causes conciliatory measures. From ability to prescribe conditions under which money will be voted grows the ability, and finally the right, to join in legislation.

LAWS

Law is mainly an embodiment of ancestral injunctions. The living ruler able to legislate only in respect of matters unprovided for, is bound by the transmitted command of the unknown and the known who have passed away. Hence the trait common to societies in early stages that the prescribed rules of conduct, of whatever kind, have a religious sanction.

In societies that become large and complex, there arise forms of activity and intercourse not provided for in the sacred code; and in respect of these the ruler is free to make regulations. Thus there comes into existence a body of laws of known human origin, which has not the sacredness of the god-descended body of laws: human law differentiates from divine law. And in proportion as the principle of voluntary co-operation more and more characterises the social type, fulfilment of contracts and implied assertion of equality in men's rights become the fundamental requirements, and the consensus of individual interests the chief source of law; such authority as law otherwise derived continues to have being recognised as secondary, and insisted upon only because maintenance of law for its own sake indirectly furthers the general welfare.

The theories at present current adapted to the existing compromise between militancy and industrialism are steps towards the ultimate theory in conformity with which law will have no other justification than that gained by it as maintainer of the conditions to complete life in the associated state.

PROPERTY

The desire to appropriate lies deep in animal nature, being, indeed, a condition to survival. The consciousness that conflict and consequent injury may probably result from the endeavour to take that which is held by another tends to establish the custom of leaving each in possession of whatever he has obtained by labour. With the passage from a nomadic to a settled state, ownership of land by the community becomes qualified by individual ownership; but only to the extent that those who clear and cultivate portions of the surface have undisturbed enjoyment of its produce. Habitually the public claim survives, qualified by various forms of private ownership mostly temporary; but war undermines communal proprietorship of land, and partly or wholly substitutes for it either the unqualified proprietorship of an absolute conqueror, or proprietorship by a conqueror, qualified by the claims of vassals holding it under certain conditions, while their claims are in turn qualified by those of dependents attached to the soil. The individualisation of ownership extended and made more definite by trading transactions under contract, eventually affects the ownership of land. Bought and sold by measure and for money, land is assimilated in this respect to the personal property produced by labour, but there is reason to suspect that while possession of such things will grow more sacred, the inhabited area which cannot be produced by labour will eventually be distinguished as something which may not be privately possessed.

THE INDUSTRIAL TYPE OF SOCIETY

The traits of the industrial type of society are so hidden by those of the still dominant militant type that its nature is nowhere more than very partially exemplified. The industrial type is distinguished from the militant type as being not both positively regulated and negatively regulated, but as being negatively regulated only. To the member of the industrial community authority says "Thou shalt not," and not "Thou shalt." On turning to the civilised to observe the form of individual character which accompanies the industrial form of society, we encounter the difficulty that the personal traits proper to industrialism are, like the social traits, mingled with those proper to militancy. Nevertheless, on contrasting the characters of our ancestors during more warlike periods with our own characters, we see that, with an increasing ratio of industrialism to militancy, have come a growing independence, a less marked loyalty, a smaller faith in governments, and a more qualified patriotism; and while there has been shown a strengthening assertion of individuality there has accompanied it a growing respect for the individualities of others, as is implied by the diminution of aggressions upon them, and the multiplication of efforts for their welfare. It seems needful to explain that it is not so much that a social life passed in peaceful occupations is positively moralising, as that a social life passed in war is positively demoralising. The sacrifice of others to self is in the one incidental only; while in the other it is necessary.

POLITICAL PROSPECT

It appears to be an unavoidable inference that the ultimate executive agency must become in some way or other elective. From such evidence as existing society will afford us, it is to be inferred that the highest State-office in whatever way filled will continue to decline in importance. No speculations concerning ultimate political forms can, however, be regarded as anything but tentative. There will probably be considerable variety in the special forms of the political institutions of industrial society; all of them bearing traces of past institutions which have been brought into congruity with the representative principle.

To turn to political functions, when corporate action is no longer needed for preserving a society as a whole from destruction or injury by other societies, the end which remains for it is that of preserving the component members of society from injury by one another. With this limitation of the state function it is probable that there will be simultaneously carried further that trait which already characterises the most industrially-organised society—the performance of increasingly-numerous and increasingly-important functions by other organisations than those which form departments of the government. Already private enterprise, working through incorporated bodies of citizens, achieves ends undreamed of as so achievable in primitive societies; and in the future other ends undreamed of now as so achievable will be achieved.

The conclusion of profoundest moment to which lines of argument converge is that the possibility of a high social state political as well as general, fundamentally depends on the cessation of war. Persistent militancy, maintaining adapted institutions, must inevitably prevent, or else neutralise, changes in the direction of more equitable institutions and laws; while permanent peace will of necessity be followed by social ameliorations of every kind.

III.—Ecclesiastical Institutions

Rightly to trace the evolution of ecclesiastical institutions, we must know whence came the ideas and sentiments implied by them. Are these innate or are they derived? They are derived. And here it may be remarked that where among African savages there existed no belief in a double which goes away during sleep, there was found to exist no belief in a double which survived after death.

From the ordinary absence of the other self in sleep, and its extraordinary absences in swoons, apoplexy, and so forth, the transition is to its unlimited absence at death; when after an interval of waiting the expectation of immediate return is given up. Commonly the spirit is supposed to linger near the body or to revisit it. Hence the universality of ministrations to the double of the deceased habitually made at funerals. The habitat of the other self is variously conceived; though everywhere there is an approach to parallelism between the life here and the imagined life hereafter. Along with the development of grave-heaps into altars, grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise and prayer. Turning to certain more indirect results of the ghost theory, we find that, distinguishing but confusedly between semblance and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing partakes of the properties of a thing. Hence the effigy of a dead man becomes a habitation for his ghost; and idols, because of the indwelling doubles of the dead, are propitiated. Identification of the doubles of the dead with animals—now with those which frequent houses or places which the doubles are supposed to haunt and now with those which are like certain of the dead in their malicious or benevolent natures—is in other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names; this latter leading to the identification of stars with persons and hence to star and sun worship. In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods arise by apotheosis. Originally the god is the superior living man whose power is conceived as superhuman. As in primitive thought divinity is synonymous with superiority, and as at first a god may be either a powerful living person or a dead person who has acquired supernatural power as a ghost, there come two origins for semi-divine beings—the one by unions between a conquering god race and the conquered race distinguished as men, and the other by supposed intercourse between living persons and spirits. Where the evidence is examined comparative sociology discloses a common origin for each leading element of religious belief.

MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS

In the primitive belief that the doubles of the dead may be induced to yield benefits or desist from inflicting evil by bribing or cajoling or else by threatening or coercing, we see that the modes of dealing with ghosts broadly contrasted as antagonistic and sympathetic, initiate the distinction between medicine man and priest.

Prompted as offerings on graves originally are by affection for the deceased, it naturally happens that such propitiations are made more by relatives than others. The family cult next acquires a more definite form by the devolution of its functions on one member of the family. Hence in ancient Egypt "it was most important that a man should have a son established in his seat after him who should perform the due rites" of sacrifice to his ka or double. Facts also show that the devolution of the sacrificial office accompanies devolution of property, for this has to bear the costs of the sacrifices; and by a natural corollary the head of the village-community combines the characters of priest and ruler. With the increase of a chief's territory there comes an accumulation of business which necessitates the employment of assistants, and among the functions deputed is that of priest, at first perhaps temporarily assumed by a brother. Such is the usual origin of priesthood.

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.

The human body needs for its preservation many other bodies by which it is, as it were, regenerated. The human mind increases its aptitude in proportion to the number of ways in which the body can be disposed. The idea constituting a formal being of the human mind is not simple, but is highly complex. An idea of each component part of the body must necessarily exist in God.

The human mind does not know the human body itself, nor does it know that the human body exists, except through the ideas and affections by which the body is affected. Indeed, the human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body. These ideas are in God. Thought is an attribute of God, and so the thought of the mind originates of necessity in Him. All the ideas which are in God always agree with those things of which they are ideas, and therefore they are all true.

Falsity consists in privation of knowledge, involved in confusion and mutilation of ideas. For instance, because they think themselves to be free, and the sole reason for this opinion is that they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes determining those actions. Nobody knows what the will is and how it moves to-day. Those who pretend otherwise and invent locations of the soul, usually excite derision and disgust.

When we look at the sun and imagine it to be immensely nearer to us than it really is, the error arises from the manner in which the essence of the sun affects the body, not merely from the exercise of the imagination.

Mutual Influences

The more things the body possesses in common with other bodies, the more things will the mind be adapted to perceive. The human mind possesses an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God. But the reason why men have not a knowledge of God as clear as that which they have of common notions is that they cannot imagine God as they can imagine bodies, and because they have attached the name of God to the images of things they are accustomed to see. This they can hardly avoid, because they are constantly affected by external bodies. And, indeed most errors arise from our application to the wrong names of things.

For if some one says that the lines drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle are unequal, it is because he understands by a circle something different from what we understand by the mathematicians. I did not reckon a man to be in error whom I recently heard complaining that his court has flown into one of his neighbour's fowls for I understand what he meant.

In the mind there is no absolutely free will. The mind is determined to this or that volition by a cause, which is determined by another cause, and so on ad infinitum. The will and intellect are one and the same. We are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as we more and more understand God and conform our actions to his will. Our highest happiness consists in this conformity, by which alone the soul finds repose. Those greatly err from the true estimate of virtue who expect to be rewarded for it, as though virtue and the service of God were our felicity itself and the highest liberty.

III.—Concerning Mental Affections

The actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone; but the passions depend on those alone which are inadequate. The essence of the mind is composed of adequate and inadequate ideas. Joy is a passion by which the mind passes to a greater degree of perfection; sorrow is a passion by which it passes to a lesser degree.

Accidentally anything may be the cause of joy, sorrow, or desire. We love or hate certain things not from any known cause, but merely from sympathy or antipathy. If we hate a thing, we seek to affirm concerning it everything that we think can affect it with sorrow, while we deny everything that we think can affect it with joy. From this we see how easily a man may think too much of himself, and of the object which he loves, and on the other hand, may think too little of what he hates.

When a man thinks too much of himself this imagination is termed pride, and is a species of delirium, because he dreams with his eyes open, that he can do all those things to which he attains in imagination alone, regarding them thus as realities, and rejoicing in them so long as he cannot imagine anything to exclude their existence and limit his power of action.

If we imagine that a person loves, desires, or hates a thing which we love, desire, or hate, we shall on that account love, desire, or hate the thing more intensely. If, on the other hand, we imagine that he is averse to the thing we love, or loves the thing to which we are averse, then we shall suffer vacillation of mind. Hence every one strives to the utmost to induce others to love what he loves and to hate what he hates. This effort is called ambition, which prompts each person to desire that others should live according to his way of thinking. But if all thus act, then all hinder each other. And if all wish to be praised or loved by all, then all hate one another.

Joy is a man's passage from a less to a greater perfection; sorrow is a man's passage from a greater to a less perfection. I say passage, for joy is not perfection itself. If a man were born with the perfection to which he passes, he would possess it without the affection of joy—a truth the more vividly apparent from the affection of sorrow which is the contrary of joy.

For, that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, but not in the less perfection itself, no one can deny, since in so far as a man partakes of any perfection, he cannot be sad.

Nor can we say that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, for privation is nothing. But the affection of sorrow is actual, and so can be nothing else than the passage to a lesser perfection, that is, the reality by which the power of acting is limited or diminished. As for the definitions of cheerfulness, pleasurable excitement, melancholy, or grief, I omit these, because they are related rather to the body than to the mind, and are merely different species of joy and sorrow.

Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Hatred is sorrow with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Devotion is love towards an object which we admire and wonder at. Derision is joy arising from the imagination that something we despise is present in the object we hate. Hope is a joy not constant, arising from the idea of something future or past, about the issue of which we are doubtful. Fear is sorrow not constant, arising in like manner.

Confidence is joy arising from the idea of a past or future object from which the cause for doubting has been removed. Despair is sorrow arising from a like cause. Confidence springs from hope, despair from fear. Pride is thinking too highly of ourselves from self-love. Despondency is thinking too little of ourselves through sorrow.

IV.—Concerning Human Bondage and Human Liberty

Good is that which is useful to us; evil, that which impedes the possession of good. But the terms good and evil are not positive, but are only modes of thought, by which we compare one thing with another. Thus, music is good to a melancholy mind, bad to a mourning mind, but neither bad nor good to a deaf man. We suffer because we form a part of nature. The power by which we preserve our being is the power of God, that is part of His essence. But man is subject to passions because he follows the order of nature.

An affection can only be overcome by a stronger affection. That which tends to conserve our existence we denominate good. That which hinders this conservation we style evil. Desire springing from the knowledge of good and evil can be restrained by desires originating in the affections by which we are agitated. Thus the effect of external causes on the mind may be far greater than that of the knowledge of good and evil. The desire springing from a knowledge of good and evil may be easily restrained by the desire of present objects. Opinion exercises a more potent influence than reason. Hence the saying of the poet, "I approve the better, but follow the worse." And hence also the preacher says "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." We ought to know both the strength and the weakness of our nature, that we may judge what reason can and cannot do in controlling our affections.

Desire springing from joy preponderates over that springing from sorrow. Man is useful to man because two individuals of the same nature when in sympathy are stronger than one. Nothing could be so good for men as that all should so agree in everything as to form as it were a single body and mind, all seeking the good of all. Hence, men acting in accord with the dictates of reason desire nothing for themselves but what they desire for all. This renders them just, faithful, and honourable.

The knowledge of God is the supreme mental good, and to know God is the supreme mental virtue. For God is the supreme subject of the understanding, and therefore to know or understand God is the supreme virtue of the mind. But to us nothing can be either good or evil unless it has something in common with us. An object whose nature is absolutely foreign to our own cannot be either good or evil to us, for this reason, that we only call a thing good or evil when it is the cause of joy or sorrow, this is to say, when it increases or diminishes our power to act.

Nothing can be reckoned good except that which is in harmony with our nature, and nothing can be reckoned evil expect what is contrary to our nature, but men cannot be said to agree in nature when they are subject to passion. We only act in harmony with the dictates of reason when we agree in nature with others. Men are most useful to each other who are mutually ruled by the laws of reason. But rarely do men live thus in harmony with reason, and thus it comes to pass that they are commonly envious of each other.

Yet men are seldom disposed to solitude, but answer generally to the familiar description of man as a social animal, for they know that the advantages preponderate over the advantages of social life. They find by experience that by mutual aid and co-operation they can, on the one hand the more easily secure what they need, and on the other hand the better defend themselves from danger.

A man who seeks after virtue will desire others to do so, and this desire will increase in proportion to this increase of his knowledge of God. The good that a man seeks by the quest of virtue he will wish others to obtain also. This is in accordance with reason, which is the operation of the mind according to the essence of the mind, that essence of the mind being knowledge, which involves the knowledge of God. The greater the knowledge of God involved in the essence of the mind, the greater will be the desire that others may seek after the same virtue which the man seeks for himself.