THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA !2 7
were everywhere surrounded. But there is no reason why the philosophic
Jew and the philosophic Christian, when all nonsense is discarded, should
not agree sufficiently in creed to live in peace and cooperation.
The first step toward this consummation, Spinoza thinks, would be a
mutual understanding about Jesus. Let improbable dogmas be withdrawn,
and the Jews would soon recognize in Jesus the greatest and
noblest of the prophets. Spinoza does not accept the divinity of Christ,
but he puts him first among men. "The eternal wisdom of God . . . has
shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most
29 {
of all in Jesus Christ." 'Christ was sent to teach not only the Jews, but
the whole human race"; hence "he accommodated himself to the comprehension
of the people . . . and most often taught by parables." 30 He
considers that the ethics of Jesus are almost synonymous with wisdom; in
reverencing him one rises to "the intellectual love of God." So noble a
figure, freed from the impediment of dogmas that lead only to divisions
and disputes, would draw all men to him; and perhaps in his name a
world torn with suicidal wars of tongue and sword might find a unity of
faith and a possibility of brotherhood at last.
III. THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE INTELLECT
Opening Spinoza's next book, we come at the outset upon one of the
gems of philosophic literature. Spinoza tells why he gave up everything
for philosophy:
After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take
place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and when I saw that all the
things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save
in so far as the mind was affected by them; I determined at last to inquire
whether there was anything which might be truly good, and able to communicate
its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the
exclusion of all other things; I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might
discover and attain the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual
supreme happiness. ... I could see the many advantages acquired from
honor and riches, and that I should be debarred from acquiring these things
if I wished seriously to investigate a new matter. . . . But the more one
possesses of either of them, the more the pleasure is increased, and the more
one is in consequence encouraged to increase them; whereas if at any time
our hope is frustrated, there arises in us the deepest pain. Fame has also this
great drawback, that if we pursue it we must direct our lives in such a way
as to please the fancy of men, avoiding what they dislike and seeking what
pleases them. . . . But the love towards a thing eternal and infinite alone
feeds the mind with a pleasure secure from all pain. . . . The greatest good
is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature.
. . . The more the mind knows, the better it understands its forces and the
*8
Epistle2i.
*Ch. 4.