which are referred to the mind, so far as it knows, are forms of "fortitude," which is either a desire by which each one endeavors from the dictate of reason alone to preserve his own being, "animosity," or a desire by which one endeavors from the dictate of reason alone to assist others and unite them in friendship,—"generosity." (Spinoza discusses forty-eight emotions which he regards as the chief— not the only ones.) We may cite one or two propositions further on the origin and nature of the emotions. "If the mind has been once affected by two emotions at the same time, it will when it is affected by either of them afterwards be affected by the other also." The mastery of the passions depends in considerable measure on the opposing of those by which the mind passes to a less degree of perfection by those by which it passes to a greater degree of perfection. Whatever

Human Servitude or Power of the Emotions. strengthens that conatus, or endeavor to persist, which constitutes the essence of each thing, is good; the opposite is evil. Things are not good in themselves, but because and in so far as desired and striven for. The stronger the conatus the more virtuous we are. There can be no virtue, without the desire to exist; and there can be no virtue greater than the desire to exist, none to which it is re.lated as means to end. It follows from the foregoing principles that all forms of grief are evil. Some forms of joy may be evil if they exist in a very high degree, e. g., love, titillation; others are, without qualification, so,—e. g., conceit, great pride; hope is not good per se. In view of the fact that evil emotions may be disciplined by means of stronger and contrary emotions, it is important to determine what emotions are stronger than and contrary to others. An emotion whose cause we imagine to be present in us is stronger than one whose cause we do not imagine to be present in us; an emotion towards a thing present is stronger than an emotion towards a thing in the future to us; feeling towards a thing which we imagine to be necessary is more intense, other things being equal, than towards

a thing which we imagine to be contingent, possible, or not necessary; desire arising from joy is stronger, other things being equal, than desire springing from grief; love and generosity are stronger than hate, anger, contempt, etc. (All these propositions, it must be remembered, are demonstrated geometrico more, - like all others in the "Ethica.") The Power of the Intellect or Human Freedom. - By the fact that the mind possesses the power of concatenating ideas according to a different order from that of the body, there are other ways of moderating and coercing the emotions and attaining to spiritual freedom than by opposing to them those contrary and stronger, ways leading more directly, if not always more certainly, to reason. It is possible to moderate feeling (1) by separating it from the idea of its exciting cause and joining it to other ideas (Part V., Prop. ii.), (2) by referring it to many instead of few causes, and to an object of reason rather than of sense or imagination (Props. ix. and vii.), (3) by viewing things in their necessary character (Prop. vi.), or under the form of eternity. The last-mentioned method is not merely a means to freedom, but is in itself freedom. In viewing things sub specie æternitatis the mind is no longer passive or subject to nature, but active and selfdetermining and free from nature. This condition of mind has an emotional aspect, in virtue of which it may be called intellectual love towards the eternal or God,for what the mind knows sub specie æternitatis it delights in, recognizing at the same time God as the cause of its delight. The intellectual love of God, amor intellectualis Dei, is the most constant of all emotions, since there is no stronger opposite emotion by which it can be destroyed (for no one can hate God), and cannot be polluted by envy or jealousy. It is a part of the infinite love of God towards himself (Prop. xxxvi.). It is necessary and eternal, and can be destroyed by nothing in nature. The cup of him who loves God with this love is full of joy. He cannot even desire that God should love him

is not the

But even

(Prop. xxxvi., Schol.). This blessedness of his reward of virtue but virtue itself (Prop. xlii.). though we should not know this love and that our minds are eternal, we ought to esteem above all things the rational endeavor for self-preservation and the rational endeavor to assist others and unite them in friendship.

The State. The conatus of man is, ideally speaking, an endeavor, in accordance with reason. Nothing is so useful to man as that which promotes that endeavor. That endeavor, whether in its bodily or its mental aspect, depends on nothing so much as upon man: nothing, therefore, is so useful to man as man. The highest good of men is a good that is virtually common to all men, a good that all can rejoice in: and he who lives in society is freer and better than he who lives in solitude. While however all this is true ideally, society actually has its foundation in the emotions rather than in reason. The corner-stones of society as it actually exists are the two principles that the emotions must be coerced by those that are stronger, and that whoever hates any one will strive to injure him unless he fears that a greater evil will befall him ("Ethica," Part III., Prop. xxxix.). The State, therefore, has its end, office, and virtue in the providing for the security of the individual as against the emotions of others, which it does by coercing those emotions by stronger and contrary ones. The right of the Stateexpressed in the most general terms is that of coercion, a right which it possesses merely because of its might. The State, as long as it has the power to exist, can do no wrong. It alone has the power to break the contract on which it rests. Every citizen is bound to obey all laws, however absurd they may seem to him. The utmost liberty of opinion and discussion, short of sedition, should be permitted in the State. The right of coercion may be vested in a single person, a popular assembly, or in a select body of men government, that is to say, may be a monarchy, a democracy, or an aristocracy. In a monarchy the sove

reign should be a king with an advisory or consultative council; in an aristocracy a senate of four hundred, chosen from a patrician order of five thousand men, constituting a great common council, the fountain of all authority; in a democracy the body of "native or naturalized citizens. Religion. Religion has a function quite different from that of philosophy. While the end of philosophy is truth, that of religion is obedience. To this end there suffices merely the belief that there is a single omnipresent highest being who loves justice and goodness, that reverence of God and obedience to him consist in righteousness and love of one's neighbor, that those alone who practise this obedience are happy, and that God pardons the repentant. Obedience to divine laws may be practised by all men, without distinction as regards their mental endowment; but philosophy is only for the select few. Religion may have a sufficient basis in the lowest form of knowledge, opinio or imaginatio; philosophy is scientia intuitiva, the highest form of knowledge.

Result. - As compared with the pantheism of Malebranche, Spinoza's pantheism is the more naturalistic; and because more consistently substantialistic, since where substance (including mechanical cause and effect) is the supreme category, there is the realm of nature as such. The substantialistic pantheism of Spinoza closes the natural course of development of Cartesianism: Descartes' notion of God as substance par excellence, or as the substance of substances, attains in Spinoza's conception of God as the only substance, all other so-called substances being merely attributes, its fully developed form, since substance is in its very nature but one.

§ 52.

The Cambridge Platonist and Richard Cumberland: Anti-Hobbean and Anti-Cartesian.

1 See Tulloch's "Rational Theology and Christianity in England" (in the seventeenth century), vol. ii.

CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS.— WHICHCOTE.

117

We may next consider a group of thinkers of the seventeenth century, whose position, if not their very existence, in the history of philosophy is due largely to the fact that they opposed the mechanico-naturalistic standpoint as advocated by the Cartesians and (especially) by Hobbes. They are the so-called Cambridge Platonists, Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Nathaniel Culverwel, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More; and Richard Cumberland. The Cambridge Platonists may be classed as intuitionalists: Cumberland as an empirico-rationalist.

§ 53.

Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683).- Whichcote graduated at Cambridge University, and was afterwards fellow there, and provost of King's College (1644). His sermons, for he became a preacher, are said to have kindled the religio-philosophical movement carried on by the Cambridge Platonists. His philosophical utterances are contained in certain "Aphorisms" on (1) the "Use of Reason in Religion," (2) the "Differences of Opinion among Christians," and (3) the "True Character of Religion." (1) "He that gives a reason for what he saith," says Whichcote, "has done what is fit to be done, and the most that can be done. He that gives no reason speaks nothing, though he saith never so much." "There is nothing proper and peculiar to man but the use of reason and exercise of virtue." (2) "Every man hath a right of judging, if he be capable; yea, can a man, ought a man, to believe otherwise than as he sees cause? Is it in a man's power to believe as he would, or only as the reason of the thing appears to him?" "He that is light of faith by the same reason will be light of belief; he will as easily disbelieve truth as believe error." (3) "Religion is intelligible, rational, and accountable: it is not our burthen, but our privilege. The moral part of religion never alters. Moral laws are of themselves, without sanction by will; and the necessity of them arises from the things themselves. All other things are in order to these.