POLLOCK'S SPINOZA.*

[FMST NOTICE.]

Ix many respects, this book stands unequalled in English literature, as an account of the life and philosophy of Spinoza. It is exceedingly able, and most scholarly. All that has been gleaned, and gathered, and conjectured even regarding the life and opinions of the great Hebrew thinker has been diligently studied by Mr. Pollock, and every statement Mr. Pollock makes regarding the facts may be accepted as true. He has given us in the introduction a critical account of all the important con- tributions to our knowledge of Spinoza which have appeared in various languages. He has sifted the numerous works which in recent years have discussed the various problems regarding the sources of Spinoza's philosophy. He has pondered over the aim, purpose, and method of Spinoza, until these have almost become part of his own mental structure, and he sets forth the system of his master, not with the calm circumspection of one who expounds a philosophy, but with the zeal, the earnestness, and with something of the intolerant fierceness of one who pro- pagates a religion. Now and then his language becomes hard and scornful, but all through the volume we have splendid work from Mr. Pollock. He has given long and patient atten- tion to his task, and all he says is deserving of the most earnest attention from men of science, philosophers, and theologians. It is well also, at the outset, to say that we owe hearty grati- tude to Mr. Pollock for the account he has given of the simple, manly, and noble life of Spinoza. It was a life of plain living and high thinking, and Mr. Pollock has told the story of it in a way which leaves nothing to be desired. It is not necessary that we should say anything further of the life of Spinoza, or of that part of his correspondence which is not strictly philosophical. The description of this correspondence forms the second and one of the most interesting chapters in the book. Nor do we propose to enter at any length into the discussion regarding the sources of Spinoza's philosophy. The discussion is not yet at an end. Professor Kuno Fischer rejects the notion of a special influence from the mediiuval Jewish thinkers, and also rejects all the various theories of Spinoza's development recently put forth by Avenarius, Sigwart, and * Spinoza : hie Lip and Philoserhu. By Frederick Pollock, Barrister-at-Law, Into Follow of Trinity College, Cambridge, &o. London: 0. Kogan Paul and Co.

others. After an examination of all the recent discussions, Kuno Fischer is still of opinion. that Descartes, and he alone, gave the impulse to Spinoza, and the difference from Descartes may be accounted for by the contradictions inherent in the Cartesian doctrine of substance. Mr. Pollock, on the other hand, is of opinion " not only that Spinoza was not solely dependent on Descartes, but he was never a Cartesian at all." Let us give Mr. Pollock's statement in his own words :—

" The Pantheist or mystical element is traced to the medimval Jewish philosophers, with whose works we know that Spinoza was familiar. This is to some extent matter of direct evidence. A claim has also been put in, and with likelihood practically amounting to certainty, for Giordano 13rune. Now, Bruno himself was subject in certain ways to Oriental influence, while the Jewish and Arabic schools of the middle-ages were again strongly imbued with Neo- Platonism, and Neo-Platonism in turn has a semi-Oriental character, It seems impossible, even were it worth while, to disentangle all the details. But it remains sufficiently clear, whatever theory we may adopt, that the East has a considerable share in this portion of Spinoza's materials. The scientific element may be assigned without hesitation to Descartes, though Spinoza carried out the scientific view of the world farther and more vigorously than Descartes him- self. But as regards its union with the mystical element, it is material to remark that a nascent scientific impulse runs through the naturalism of the Renaissance philosophy, as represented by Bruno and others; and thus the line of contact was, in a manner, already traced. The Monistic element is given by reaction from the dualism of Cartesian -philosophy, and determined chiefly, as I think, by considerations of a scientific order. The Pantheist idea may also have its part. But we can strike no exact account between the two, for Spinoza had completed the fusion of the mystical and

the scientific principles before he settled his monism in its final form."

Leaving the problem of the sources of Spinoza's philosophy, as too large for treatment by us within our narrow limits, let us look at the reading of that philosophy given us by Mr.

Pollock. We shall not understand it, unless we first have a. clear perception of Mr. Pollock's philosophical position. We may say, then, that Mr. Pollock's philosophical position is

eminently scientific. His thought is ruled by scientific ideas. The law of the conservation of energy has so penetrated his

thought., that it has become for him a test of existence. " You cannot get a thing out of the way without doing work upon it," is his final way of stating that a thing exists. This ultra- scientific mode of looking at things is consistently carried through by Mr. Pollock, and is applied by him to all spheres of thought, and life and things. He thinks that if he has shown 'a mode of thought or statement to be scientific, he has said enough about it. It has not occurred to him that science yet awaits its metaphysical justification. He and others, such as Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, the late Professor Clifford, have been contented to rest in Hume, and have not yet seen that the sceptical method of Hume is good not only against theology, but is good against science also. And the metaphysic which will leave room for science, will also leave room for more than science. But a psychology which is only physiology, and an ethic which is only hedonism, are only dreams within dreams.

It is difficult, in these days of loud speaking about Spinoza and about science, for one to speak out his mind about both. At the risk, however, of being set down as incompetent, we venture to say, that of late years Spinoza has been exalted to a position far beyond his merits as a thinker. We make bold to say that many of his most important propositions in the Ethic form only a series of logical quadrupeds. He uncon- sciously palters in a double sense, and uses words now in the sense of the definitions he has laid down, now in the sense used in common language. Even Mr. Pollock has been con- strained to point out several paralogisms of this kind ; many more lie close at hand. But the great merit which Mr. Pollock claims for Spinoza is that he has banished Anthropomor- phism. To take one out of many passages of the same kind, " Rejecting the theological conception of the Universe as created and governed by a magnified human despot, which indirectly makes man the measure of all things, Spinoza was not more willing to accept the contrary form of Anthropomorphism which admits no reality of things outside what is known to ourselves." It is time to put a question or two to men of science and philosophers. For there is no more terrible word, now-a-days, than this long word." Anthropomorphism." Men of science use it to conjure with, and Mr. Pollock seems to think that when be has said it, the case is finished. We come, then, to Spinoza as interpreted by Mr. Pollock, and we find that Substance is what is in itself and is conceived by itself ; its concept needs not the concept of another thing for it to be formed from. Substance exists in infinite ways, but the only aspects in which men may know substance are the attributes of thought and extension.. When we inquire how this limitation has been arrived at, we are finally, after innumerable devious wanderings, brought to, the empirical phenomenon that man is a thinking being who is extended. Mr. Pollock, with great innocence, calls it a particular case of the universal order; and with equal naivete, Mr. Pollock's master brings it in as an axiom in the Second Book of the Ethics,. "Homo cogitat." We shall allow Mr. Pollock to state these axioms : " The specific assumptions as to the nature of man are simple appeals to common experience." " Man thinks," " We are aware of a particular body "—that is, each man is aware of his own body —" as affected in many ways." "We are not aware, nor have we- any perceptions, of any individual things beside bodies and. modes of thought." The first two propositions of the Second Book, which, without these axioms (as Spinoza calls them), assumptions (as Mr. Pollock calls them), would have no meaning,. are :—" I. Cogitatio attributum Dei est, sive Deus est res cogitans. II. Extensio attributum Dei est, sive Deus est rest extensa." In no possible way can we get to the " Deus eat res cogitans," unless we have previously assumed the "home cogitat ;" nor to the "Deus est res extensa," unless we have previously ascertained that " we are aware of a particular body." Thus we are led to see how we are to get rid of Anthropo- morphism. Take man and attenuate him to an aspect, limit him. to a "cogitans res," and also limit the world to a " res extensa ;" join these two aspects together somehow, postulate an abiding parallelism between them, so that we may consider them as aspects of one substance ; then take these two aspects of thought and extension, thus bound together, enlarge them • indefinitely, call them self-caused and by other names, and there will be an objective order of the universe, altogether free from anthropomorphism. Neither Spinoza nor his modern expositor have shown any cause why these two attributes of thought and extension should be chosen ; but they have simply chosen these aspects of man, in an arbitrary way, and sought to explain the universe by them. Their Deus, which they also call the sum-total of things, is nothing else than a magnified. non-natural man, who has been attenuated into aspects, and these aspects have been enlarged to shadows, and out of them they have made their dream-world ; and their non-natural man is as much anthropomorphic, and more inadequate to the explan, ation of the universe than is the magnified human despot of whom Mr. Pollock speaks. But Mr. Pollock has not given any explanation of the way in which we reach the absolute res cogitans. Nor has he explained that remarkable scholium to the seventeenth proposition of the First Book of the Ethics, the

following sentence of which bears a striking resemblance to the philosophy of Hamilton and Mansel, which Mr. Pollock thinks a defunct philosophy :—" Nam intellectua et voluntas qui Dei essentiam constituerent, a nostro intellectu et voluntate, tote cock diferre deberent, nee in ulla re, praeterquam in nomine,

eonvenire potest ; non aliter, scilicet, quam inter se convenient

signum coeleste, et canis, animal latrans." It is a long way, certainly, from the dog which barks to the dog-star. But it is always open to a man or a philosopher to stay at home.

It is always open to a philosopher to declare that the Divine intelligence and will must ever remain unknown to man.

But it is not open to him to say that these bear no resemblance to the intellect and will we know, and then to insist on building a whole system on our ignorance. If the resem- blance between divine intelligence and human be only in name, then neither affirmation nor negation regarding it is possible to man, and Spinoza's propositions, on his own showing, are only

a playing with words. If there be a resemblance, then, again, we are plunged into anthropomorphism. Either we must have more than the " cogitans res, et cogitans extensa," or we cannot have these.

It is an old objection to Spinozism that the substance re- mains in barren self-identity. There is. no logical transition from substance to attribute, nor in it is there any difference by which movement can begin. Nor does the exposition of Mr. Pollock help us in any way. When we have the one substance before us, the unity is complete ; as soon as the attributes are before us, the dualism is absolute. Nor is there any way of passing from the substance to its attributes, nor from the at- tributes back to the substance. At one time in his exposition Mr. Pollock is led to speak of the implicit idealism of Spuioza's system, and he confesses that thought has swallowed up all the other attributes. But again, in dealing with the problem of body and mind, he seems to admit that the series in extension from the sacred place as summarily as possible. The Abbe has swallowed up the other series, and all through the two Martin is very far from regarding the Ritualists as Papists in series go along side by side, neither influencing the other. And disguise ; on the contrary, he thinks that their temper and' in the last resort, Mr. Pollock says, if you call the two series one, habits of thought arc altogether alien from the spirit of the knot is cut. " The problem of making a connection between the Roman-Catholic system, and that they have vei7 the inner and the outer series of phenomena becomes a merely little chance, in their present frame of mind, of becoming- scientific one." Truly there is great virtue in an " if." And others converts to that system. Their whole training, both besides Shakespeare have come to know this. Like Professor secular and ecclesiastical, has so saturated them with the. Huxley, in his little volume on Hume, M r. Pollock is con- love of liberty that they kick against that development of tent to be an idealist or a materialist, as ho happens to be looking authority in the Roman Communion which requires an entire. for the time either at the inner or the outer series of the facts surrender of the intellect and will. But the devotional and which are correlated in human experience. Is not the true msthetic side of Catholicism has a great fascination for the conclusion this,—that some of the most essential elements in Ritualists ; and by combining this with the Englishman's in- the problem have been eliminated, and that we cannot ration- born love of freedom they not only feel no impulse towards ally account for our experience without taking with us as pre- conversion themselves, but they arrest the conversion of many suppositions something which Spinoza has omitted P This who, but for the Ritualists, would join the Church of Rome. conclusion is irresistibly borne home to our minds as we follow The expulsion of the Ritualists from the Establishment would the evolution of the thought of Spinoza, either in his own works naturally, therefore, be a matter of sincere rejoicing to the or in the exposition of Mr. Pollock. In order to make any pro- Abbe Martin. The Establishment would thereby be greatly gross, they are constrained to take up empirically, in a some- weakened, not merely by the loss of a considerable number of what arbitrary manner, distinction after distinction, which by zealous, hard-working clergy, and a larger number than is no means flow from their axioms and definitions. In this generally imagined of laity, but still more by the expulsion manner, we in some mysterious fashion arrive at the conception from the Establishment of that msthetic and devotional element of concrete beings like ourselves, people with a consciousness which now satisfies the craving of many who else would seek it like ours ; and ere we know it, we have discovered ourselves to in the Roman Communion. But though the Abbe Martin be members of a social organism. The social organism is not and the Church Association desire the same end from opposite deduced rationally from first principles. It is empirically motives, there is the widest possible difference in their assumed. Instead of a parallelism of two sets of facts, as soon method. The Abbe has a considerable admiration for' as I postulate another being like myself, there are three sets of the Ritualists, but his admiration is evidently qualified with a facts,—the inward. states of my own consciousness, and the good deal of a very contrary feeling, and he finds it hard to outward series which correspond somehow to these, and a series write of Dr. Littledale in particular with patience. Yet, with of inward states in the consciousness of another man. But all this, and in spite of undoubted provocation, the Abbe Martin Mr. Pollock has not attempted to show how these three sets of never forgets that he is a Christian and a gentleman. His tone facts can be philosophically explained. He has referred to this and language never fail to conciliate respect, even where his in the opening paragraphs of the chapter on " Body and reasoning fails to command assent. This is much in a contro- Mind," but he has contented himself with a bare statement of the versialist who evidently feels strongly, and we are anxious to difficulty, and has not showed the way to a solution. His friend, express our appreciation of it, before we proceed to point out the late Professor Clifford, when face to face with this question, what appear to us to be very serious flaws in the author's took refuge in an instinct. "I have absolutely no means of per- argumentation. Like many an eager controversialist, he is so• ceiving your mind. I judge by analogy that it exists, and the intent on battering down his opponent's fortifications that he is instinct which leads me to come to that conclusion is the social far too negligent in guarding his own defences. Most of the instinct, as it has been formed in me by generations during arguments which appear to the Abbe Martin so conclusive which men have lived together ; and they could not have lived against the claim made by the Church of England that she is a together, unless they had gone ou that supposition." Mr. Pol- true representative of Christ's Church in this country are two- lock's statement, though not quite so plain as that of Professor edged, and may with equal facility be turned against the Church Clifford, seems to us to amount to it. And the result is that of Rome. The Abbe and his friends have a right to ask us for these high philosophers, who are equal to the construction of a proofs of that assertion, and we proceed to give them.