BENEDICT DE SPINOZA.[1]
It is now two hundred years since there died, in an obscure lodging at the Hague, Benedict de Spinoza, a philosopher appreciated in his own time only by a very few. His name was indeed widely known, but it was for the most part known only to be execrated. For some time after his death Spinozist was current among the theologians of Holland as a term of opprobrium. Spinoza's thought, however, was of that vital kind which sooner or later cannot fail to make for itself a way into its due place. Some three-quarters of a century after his death came the great awakening of letters and philosophy in Germany, and the leaders of that movement, among whom the name of Lessing must be mentioned first, were not slow to perceive Spinoza's importance. Ever since that time his influence has been a widening and increasing one: not that I stop to maintain this in the strictest sense which can be put upon the words, for I do not think a philosopher's influence is properly measured by the number of persons who agree with his doctrines. Philosophical doctrines have been, and will doubtless continue to be, matter of controversy, but it is no matter of controversy that the life of a righteous man who gives up all else that he may seek the truth for its own sake is a sure and priceless possession for all the generations of men who come after him.
Baruch de Spinoza was born at Amsterdam on the 24th of November, 1632. His parents were members of the Portuguese synagogue, a community established towards the end of the sixteenth century by Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal, who had turned to the United Provinces as a safe asylum. For at this critical time Holland, it should be remembered to her eternal honor, was the most tolerant commonwealth in Europe. Spinoza was brought up in the course of Hebrew learning then usual, and at the age of fifteen was already distinguished for his knowledge of the Talmud. He was also familiar from his youth up, as his writings bear witness, with the masterpieces of the golden age of modern Jewish literature. From the tenth to the twelfth centuries there flourished at the Mohammedan courts of Spain and Africa a series of Arab and Hebrew philosophers who held a position with regard to the societies in which they lived much like that of the Catholic schoolmen afterwards with regard to western Christendom. Like the schoolmen, they set themselves to effect a fusion of the Aristotelian philosophy with the accepted theology of their churches; and the schoolmen were in fact acquainted with their work to a considerable extent, and referred to it quite openly, and in general with respect.[2]
The Jewish schoolmen, if we may so call them, cannot be said to have founded any distinct philosophical doctrine; in philosophy they were hardly distinguishable, if at all, from their Mohammedan compeers. But they gave a distinct philosophical cast to Jewish theology, and thereby to Jewish education. Two names stand out foremost among them. Ibn-Ezra (1088-1166 A.D.) was a traveller, astronomer, grammarian, and poet, in addition to the learning in theology and philosophy which made his commentaries on the Scriptures classical. But the chief of all is Moses ben Maimon (1135—1205 AD.) who became known in Europe as Maimonides, the father of modern Jewish theology. He was regarded with such veneration as to be compared to the great Lawgiver himself, so that it passed into a proverb, "From Moses until Moses there arose none like unto Moses."[3] The Jewish peripatetic school
- ↑ In the course of this paper I shall have to refer several times to Dr. A. van der Linde's Benedictus Spinoza: Bibliografie (The Hague, 1871), which gives a full account of the literature of the subject.
- ↑ The names of Ibn-Roshd (Averroes) and Ibis-Sina (Avicenna) were familiar in Europe, and Dante groups them (Inf iv. 143) with the leaders of classical science and philosophy. Ibn-Gebirol (Avicebron), a Jewish member of the school, broke with the Aristotelian tradition to take up Neo-Platonic ideas. His philosophical work was discredited and fell into oblivion among his own people; but it became current in Europe in a Latin form, and was used by Giordano Bruno, through whom it may have thus come round to Spinoza.
- ↑ In later times the proverb received an extended application in honor of Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the musician, himself a philosopher and the restorer of Jewish culture in Germany. Maimonides' reputation was not established without conflict. About 1235 his opinions were formally condemned by the synagogue of Montpellier.
