THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA
Since human actions obey laws as fixed as those of geometry., psychology
should be studied in geometrical form, and with mathematical objectivity.
"I will write about human beings as though I were concerned with lines
and planes and solids." 71 "I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, ot
execrate, but to understand, human actions; and to this end I have looked
upon passions . . . not as vices of human nature, but as properties just as
pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder and the like to the nature
of the atmosphere." 72 It is this impartiality of approach that gives to
Spinoza's study of human nature such superiority
that Froude called it
"the most complete by far which has ever been made by any moral
philosopher." 73 Taine knew no better way of praising Beyle's analysis than
to compare it with Spinoza's; while Johannes Miiller, coming to the sub-
ject of the instincts and emotions, wrote : "With regard to the relations of
the passions to one another apart from their physiological conditions, it
is impossible to give any better account than that which Spinoza has
laid down with unsurpassed mastery," and the famous physiologist, with
the modesty which usually accompanies real greatness, went on to quote
in extenso the third book of the Ethics. It is through that analysis of
human conduct that Spinoza approaches at last the problems which
give the title to his masterpiece.
3. INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS
Ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three conceptions of
the ideal character and the moral life. One is that of Buddha and Jesus,
which stresses the feminine virtues, considers all men to be equally precious,
resists evil only by returning good, identifies virtue with love, and
inclines in politics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of
Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which stresses the masculine virtues, accepts
the inequality of men, relishes the risks of combat and conquest and rule,
identifies virtue with power, and exalts an hereditary aristocracy. A third,
the ethic of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, denies the universal applicabil-
ity of either the feminine or the masculine virtues; considers that only
the informed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse circum-
stance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies virtue, there-
fore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying mixture of aristocracy
and democracy in government. It is the distinction of Spinoza that
his ethic unconsciously reconciles these apparently hostile philosophies,
weaves them into a harmonious unity, and gives us in consequence a
system of morals which is the supreme achievement of modern thought
He begins by making happiness the goal of conduct; and he defines
happiness very simply as the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain.
But pleasure and pain are relative, not absolute; and they are not states
n r. T-P., fcxtrod. n lbid.9 ch. I. Short Studies, I, 308.
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