THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA I47
what if laws stifle growth and freedom? What shall a man do if the
state, seeking, like every organism or organization, to preserve its owr>
existence (which ordinarily means that office-holders seek to keep them-
selves in office), becomes a mechanism of domineering and exploitation?
Obey even the unjust law, answers Spinoza, if reasonable protest and
discussion are allowed and speech is left free to secure a peaceful change.
"I confess that from such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise;
but what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could spring
therefrom?" 127 Laws against free speech are subversive of all law; fo*
men will not long respect laws which they may not criticize.
The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more
obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, . . . but by those
whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.
Men in general are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure
with so little patience as that views which they believe to be true should be
counted crimes against the laws. . . . Under such circumstances they do not
think it disgraceful, but most honorable, to hold the laws in abhorrence,
and to refrain from no action against the government. 128 . . . Laws which
can be broken without any -wrong to one's neighbor are counted but a
laughing-stock; and so far from such laws restraining the appetites and lusts
of mankind, they rather heighten them. Nitimur in vetitwn semper, cupimusque
negata* 29
And Spinoza concludes like a good American constitutionalist: "If
actions only could be made the ground of criminal prosecutions, and
words were always allowed to pass free, sedition would be divested of
every semblance of justification." 130
The less control the state has over the mind, the better for both the
citizen and the state. Spinoza, while recognizing the necessity of the state,
distrusts it, knowing that power corrupts even the incorruptible (was this
not the name of Robespierre?) and he does not look with ; equanimity
upon the extension of its authority from the bodies and actions to the
souls and thoughts of men; that would be the end of growth and the
death of the group. So he disapproves of state control of education,
especially in the universities : "Academies that are founded at the public
expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as
to restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts and sciences will be
better cultivated to the full if every one that asks leave is allowed to teach
publicly, at his own cost and risk." 181 How to find a middle way between
universities controlled by the state and universities controlled by private
wealth, is a problem which Spinoza does not solve; private wealth had
""Ibid.
**Ibid.
**T. P., ch. 10. ("We always resist prohibitions, and yearn
us.")
"T. T-P., pref.
mT. P., ch. 8.
for what is denied