Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses

by Felix Adler

Man is a social being. As a drop is raised upward in the great ocean by the onflowing of the wave, so the individual mind is exalted by the presence and communion of congenial minds moving in the same current.

'Tis thus that Spinoza deduces the social virtues. Hate is evil at all times, for hate implies the isolation and the weakness of the powers of reason. We should reward hatred with love and restore the broken accord of intellect. Love is the sense of kinship in the common search for reason's goal—wisdom. That all men should so live and act together that they may form, as it were, one body and one mind, is the ideal of life. Friendship therefore he prizes as the dearest of earth's possessions, and wedlock he esteems holy because in it is cemented the union of two souls for the common search of truth. We should be serene at all times and shun fear, which is weakness, and hope also which is the child of desire, and haughtiness and humbleness and remorse and pity should we avoid. But in stillness and with collected power shall we possess our souls obedient to the laws of mind that make our being and helping when we help for reason's sake. The passions bind us to passing phenomena. When they become transparent to our reason, when we know their causes then our nature conquers outward nature and we are masters, we are free.

Thus the emotional life is extinguished. The feelings lose their color and vitality, become blank "as lines and surfaces," and man, freed from the constraints of passion, dwells in the pure realm of intellect, and in constant intercourse with the mind of God, fulfills the purpose of his existence—to know and understand.

Against the blows of misfortune also reason steels us. Sorrow is but the lurking suspicion that all might have been otherwise. When we come to know that all things are by necessity, we shall find tranquillity in yielding to the inevitable. For so God works by necessity. For all things are in his hands as clay in the hand of the potter, which the potter taketh and fashioneth therefrom vessels of diverse value, some to honor and some to disgrace. And none shall rebuke him, for all is by necessity.

When the body passes away the mind does not wholly perish, but something remains that is infinite, an eternal modus dwelling in the depths of the eternal mind. But though we knew not that something of the mind remained, yet were goodness and strength of soul to be sought for above all else. For who, foreseeing that he cannot always feed on healthy nourishment, would therefore sate himself with deadly poison? or who, though he knew that the mind is not immortal, would therefore lead an empty life, devoid of reason's good and guidance? The wisdom of the wise and the freedom of the free is not in the aspect of death but of life. Religion and piety lead us to follow the laws of necessity in the world where they are manifest, to dwell on the intellect of God, of God their fount and origin.

But I forbear to enter farther into this wonderful system. We see a giant wrestling with nature, seeking to wrest from her her secret. Mysterious nature baffles him and the riddle is still unread. That substance of which he speaks is no more than an abstraction of the mind whose reality in the outward world he has failed to prove. He has also erred in turning aside from the rich and manifold life of the emotions, for the emotions are not in themselves evil, they are the seminal principle of all virtue.

On pillars of intellect, Spinoza reared his system. Still, solemn, sublime like high mountains it towers upward, but is devoid of color and warmth, and even the momentary glow that now and then starts up in his writings, passes quickly away like the flush of evening that reddens the snowy summits of Alpine ranges.

Spinoza's name marks a lofty peak in human history. He was a true man; no man more fully lived his teachings. If he describes the pursuit of knowledge as the highest virtue, he was himself a noble example of tireless devotion in that pursuit. He was well versed in the natural sciences, skillful in the use of the microscope, and his contributions to the study of the inner life of man have earned him lasting recognition. Johannes Mueller, the distinguished physiologist, has included the third division of Spinoza's Ethics in his well known work on physiology.

Religion, however, was Spinoza's favorite theme, that religion which is free from all passionate longings and averse to superstition of whatever kind. He was among the first to hurl his mighty arguments against the infallible authority of the Bible, arguments that still command attention though two hundred years have since passed by. Miracles, he said, are past belief, the beauty of Cosmos is far more deserving of admiration than any so called miracle could possibly be. He demanded—this was a great and novel claim—that the methods of natural science be applied to the study of scripture, that the character of the age and local surroundings be considered in determining the meaning of each scriptural author. In brief that a natural history of the bible, so to speak, should be attempted. He claimed that the priesthood had falsified the very book which they professed to regard most holy. He denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and set forth in singularly clear and lucid language the discrepancies in which that work abounds. He closed the treatise in which these views are laid down—the Theologico-political Tract—with a magnificent plea for liberty of conscience and of speech. That state alone, he says, can be free and happy which rests on the freedom of the Individual citizen. Where the right of free utterance is curtailed, hypocrisy and shameful conformance flourish, and public contumely and disgrace which ought to serve as a mete punishment for the vicious, become a halo about the head of the most noble of men. Religion and piety, he concludes, the state has a right to demand, but nothing hereafter shall be known as religion and piety save the practice of equity and of a wise and helpful love.

It was a bold awakening note which thus rang out into the seventeenth century, and theologians were bitter in their replies. The book was confiscated and Christian curses were added to Jewish anathemas. But they failed to affect Spinoza.