SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REACTIONS
A Law of Thought.—Whenever a tendency of thought has been vigorously prosecuted for any length of time, a reaction invariably displays itself. This rule is illustrated by the history of thought in the seventeenth century. Mechanical categories, as we have seen, had been steadily extending themselves for the better part of two centuries, and with the materialism of Hobbes the process seemed fairly complete.
Meanwhile, however, human thought began to explore other avenues. Though reaction from mechanical ways of thinking did not (at any rate, in the circles with which we are concerned) take the form of an obscurantist retreat into prejudice or superstition, the results of the new science and its attendant mechanistic philosophy served as a base for further explorations. The principles which Descartes and Hobbes had laid down were criticised by being carried out to their logical conclusions.
Spinoza.—The philosopher with whom we shall first concern ourselves was a Jew of Spanish extraction, living in what was then the freest country in Europe—Holland. Spinoza (1632-1677) was undoubtedly the greatest thinker of his own age, which was highly fertile in that respect, and he still stands as one of the most notable figures in the long history of European thought. Not only is his outlook comprehensive, and his thought many-sided, but his standpoint was "detached" to a degree hitherto unknown. He was untainted, so far as a human being ever can be, by "anthropomorphism"; he endeavoured to transcend the merely human outlook. Here is always the dividing line between the great and the merely mediocre thinker.
Spinoza's Method.—Spinoza's philosophical ancestry may be traced back to Bruno, whose acquaintance we made in a previous chapter, but in whose company we did not long remain. This highly original mind had already, by the doctrine of the infinitude and the divinity of nature, shown how the concept of God and the concept of nature might be closely bound up together. By similar means, Spinoza hoped to indicate the reality of the spiritual, without disturbing the mechanical world-conception which the new science and new philosophy had created between them. He wished somehow to find God not outside, but in Nature; not in disturbances of the order of Nature, but in that order itself.
The Term Nature.—It would be a misapprehension to suppose that the terms "God" and "Nature" are regarded by Spinoza as interchangeable, though his numerous critics were accustomed to declare that this was the case. On the contrary, Spinoza, in order to anticipate the misunderstanding which he saw might arise on this point, reintroduced into philosophy a pair of terms which the Scholastics had long before brought into currency, but which had since fallen out of fashion—Natura naturans and Natura naturata. We might perhaps translate the former of these, "Creative Nature," and the latter, "Created Nature." Natura naturans is equivalent to "Nature as a creative power," or "The creative power immanent in Nature." Natura naturata is equivalent to "Nature as it is when created," or "The results of the creative power immanent in Nature." And the Natura naturans is active in the Natura naturata at all points: the creative power is immanent in creation. As Spinoza puts it in one of his letters:
"I assert that God is (as it is called) the immanent, not the external cause of all things. That is to say, I assert with Paul, that in God all things live and move.... But if any one thinks that the Theologico-Political Treatise (one of his works) assumes that God and Nature are one and the same, he is entirely mistaken."[8]
Thus, for Spinoza, the order of nature, which had seemed to so many of his contemporaries, from the religious point of view, such a devastating conception, as leaving no room for the spiritual, was itself only explicable if interpreted spiritually.