physician, Lewis Meyer, came from Amsterdam at his request, and was alone with him at the last. When the people of the house came home in the afternoon, they found Spinoza dead.
Some time before this Spinoza had committed to Van der Spyck the trust of sending his unpublished papers to a bookseller at Amsterdam. This was duly fulfilled, and in the course of the same year the philosopher's posthumous works, including the "Ethics," appeared. They were received with even more violent opposition than the "Theologico-Political Treatise," and were forbidden by the States-General of Holland.[1]
Spinoza's first biographer, Colerus,[2] whose frank and honest admiration of Spinoza's personal character went along with a no less frank detestation of his philosophy, calls the "Opera Posthuma" abominable productions, and states that divers champions were providentially raised up to confute them, who had all the success they could desire. At this day there is probably no man living who has read these refutations, while the fame of Spinoza stands higher than ever.
He was an outcast from the synagogue, a stranger to the Church, a solitary thinker who cast his thought in difficult and startling forms. Notwithstanding all this, men of divers nations and of widely different opinions have joined together to do honor to the memory of Benedict de Spinoza, the philosopher whose genius has made him in some sort the founder of modern speculation, and the man who in modern times has given us the highest example of a true and perfect philosophic life.
It is impossible to attempt in this place any account of Spinoza's philosophy; and I may add that he is eminently one of those writers whose thought cannot be learned at second hand. It may be worth while, however, to give a very brief sketch of the manner in which his influence has risen and spread in modern times.
Spinoza very soon had eccentric followers as well as bitter enemies in his own country;[3] but in the European world of letters he was entirely misunderstood and neglected for the best part of a century. Leibnitz, the man most capable of doing him justice, preferred to take the opposite course, and he was ill-treated even by the people who might have been expected to take him up if only for the reason that he was hateful to theologians. He fared little better at the hands of Bayle and Voltaire than at the hands of orthodox apologists. To Lessing, the founder in some sort of German literature and criticism, belongs the credit of having seen and announced Spinoza's real worth. In a certain memorable conversation with Jacobi he said, in so many words, "There is no philosophy but the philosophy of Spinoza." This and much more came out after Lessing's death in a long correspondence between Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn, which finally degenerated into a controversy. After the report of that one conversation, the record of all this is now of little interest; from these, however, and from other letters preserved among Lessing's works, the fact comes out that Lessing thoroughly understood Spinoza, and had grasped the leading points more firmly than many of Spinoza ‘s later critics.
Meanwhile Goethe too had found out Spinoza for himself, and he has recorded how the study of the "Ethics" had a critical effect on the development of his character.[4] And his statement is fully borne out by the witness of his mature work. Goethe's poems are full of the spirit of Spinoza; not that you can often lay your finger on this or that idea and give a reference to this or that proposition in the "Ethics," but there is a Spinozistic atmosphere about all his deeper thoughts. There is a set of speculative poems, "Gott und Welt," which gives the most striking instances; but the same ideas are woven into all parts of Goethe's work, and may be found alike in romance, tragedy, lyrics, and epigrams.
The influence thus started in philosophy and literature spread rapidly. Kant's great work in philosophy was independent of it; but a strong current of Spinozism set in immediately after Kant, and acted powerfully on his successors. Fichte, though his system widely departs from Spinoza's, had obviously mastered his philosophy and felt the intellectual fascina-
- ↑ June 20, 1678. The full text of the ordinance is given in Van der Linde's Bibliografie, No. 24.
- ↑ The Dutch original of his book (No. 88 in Bibilografie) is extremely scarce. There is one copy in the Royal Library at the Hague: the only other known one is, according to Dr. van der Linde, at Halle. The French version by which it is commonly known, and which is often taken for the original, is also scarce, but has been several times reprinted. The last reprint is in Dr. Ginsberg's edition of Spinoza's correspondence (Leipzig, 1876).
- ↑ See Van der Linde's Spinoza, seine Lehre und dessen erste Nachwirkungen in Holland (Göttingen, 1862), and M. Paul Janet's article in the Revue des Deux Mondes for July 15, 1876.
- ↑ Aus meinem Leben, Book 14.
