THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
cedure, and impressed with the achievements of Copernicus, Kepler and
Galileo. To our more loosely textured minds the result is an exhausting
concentration of both matter and form; and we are tempted to console
ourselves by denouncing this philosophic geometry as an artificial chessgame
of thought in which axioms, definitions, theorems and proofs are
manipulated like kings and bishops, knights and pawns; a logical solitaire
invented to solace Spinoza's loneliness. Order is against the grain of our
minds; we prefer to follow the straggling lines of fantasy, and to weave
our philosophy precariously out of our dreams. But Spinoza had but one
compelling desire to reduce the intolerable chaos of the world to unity
and order. He had the northern hunger for truth rather than the southern
lust for beauty; the artist in him was purely an architect, building a system
of thought to perfect symmetry and form.
Again, the modern student will stumble and grumble over the terminology
of Spinoza. Writing in Latin, he was compelled to express his essentially
modern thought in medieval and scholastic terms; there was no
other language of philosophy which would then have been understood*
So he uses the term substance where we should write reality or essence;
perfect where we should write complete; ideal for our object; objectively
for subjectively, and formally for objectively. These are hurdles in the
race, which will deter the weakling but will stimulate the strong.
In short, Spinoza is not to be read, he is to be studied; you must approach
him as you would approach Euclid, recognizing that in these brief
two hundred pages a man has written down his lifetime's thought with
stoic sculptury of everything superfluous. Do not think to find its core
by running over it rapidly; never in a work of philosophy was there
so little that could be skipped without loss. Every part depends upon preceding
parts; some obvious and apparently needless proposition turns
out to be the cornerstone of an imposing development of logic. You will
not understand any important section thoroughly till you have read and
pondered the whole; though one need not say, with Jacobi's enthusiastic
exaggeration, that "no one has understood Spinoza to whom a single line
of the Ethics remains obscure." "Here, doubtless," says Spinoza, in the
second part of his book, "the reader will become confused, and will
recollect many things which will bring him to a standstill; and therefore
I pray him to proceed gently with me and form no judgment concerning
these things until he shall have read all." 35 Read the book not all at once,
but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider
that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary,
like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza; or, better, both.
Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you
have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philos-
ophy.
*Part H a proposition 1 1, note.