THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA
and as Cicero said, even the philosophers who write books in its praise
take care to put their names on the title-page. "One who despises himself
is the nearest to a proud man/' says Spinoza (putting in a sentence a pet
theory of the psychoanalysts, that every conscious virtue is an effort to
conceal or correct a secret vice) . And whereas Spinoza dislikes humility
he admires modesty, and objects to a pride that is not "tenoned and
mortised" in deeds. Conceit makes men a nuisance to one another: "the
conceited man relates only his own great deeds, and only the evil ones
of others"; 86 he delights in the presence of his inferiors, who will gape at
his perfections and exploits; and becomes at last the victim of those who
praise him most; for "none are more taken in by flattery than the proud." 87
So far our gentle philosopher offers us a rather Spartan ethic; but he
strikes in other passages a softer tone. He marvels at the amount of envy,
recrimination, mutual belittlement, and even hatred, which agitates and
separates men; and sees no remedy for our social ills except in the
elimination of these and similar emotions. He believes it is a simple matter
to show that hatred, perhaps because it trembles on the verge of love,
can be more easily overcome by love than by reciprocated hate. For
hatred is fed on the feeling that it is returned; whereas "he who believes
himself to be loved by one whom he hates is a prey to the conflicting
emotions of hatred and love, since (as Spinoza perhaps too optimistically
believes) love tends to beget love; so that his hatred disintegrates and
loses force. To hate is to acknowledge our inferiority and our fear; we do
not hate a foe whom we are confident we can overcome. "He who wishes
to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who
endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure
and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at
all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully." 88
"Minds are conquered not by arms but by greatness of soul." 89 In such
passages Spinoza sees something of the light which shone on the hills of
Galilee.
But the essence of his ethic is rather Greek than Christian. "The endeavor
to understand is the first and only basis of virtue" 90
nothing
could be more simply and thoroughly Socratic. For "we are tossed about
by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds,
we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate." 91 We think we
are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are
most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and
swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation
because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived.
A passion is an "inadequate idea" ; thought is response delayed till every
vital angle of a problem has aroused a correlative reaction, inherited or
"Ibid.; and III, 55, note. "IV, App., def. ai. "IV, 45.
TV, App. n. M IV, 26. ""Ill, 59, note.
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