Spinoza distinguishes between the spiritual needs of the majority of men and the minority, and between the religions which suit the one and the other. But all men, without exception, must acquire the religion demanded by all, that is practical religion, which consists in keeping those commandments given us in the sacred books. This obedience serves to weaken passions; in the same proportion as man attains this end, so a light, ever increasing in purity, illumines his intellect, and so much the more does he comprehend that true happiness is the result of virtue. Few men go beyond this, or—without any other guide than their reason—experience that intellectual love of God, inseparable from the true knowledge of God and man; this love, when entirely disinterested, yields a joy which is not the reward of virtue, since it is one with virtue itself.
The divine law was in the world, as St John said, before the coming of Moses or of Christ, but the world as a whole was ignorant of it; reason leads us to it, and reason tells us that it leads to the highest beatitude, and that those who follow it will not need to seek any other.
But there is one thing of which reason cannot tell us; this—that the moral effect of this universal law, which is obeyed, not because it is true, necessary and perfect, but simply because Moses commanded the observance of it, by reason of the covenant made by God, and because Christ commands it in His own name, is the power of leading to this beatitude, which those obtain who strive after the spirit of Christ, perceiving in this law of God, absolute truth. This reason alone could not have taught us, it is not written in the human heart, this we learn in the Bible.
That obedience only to a truth should inevitably produce certain results can hardly be asserted with mathematical certainty, since mathematical results are the effects only of those things which can be deduced from the elements contained in them; but a moral certainty we can feel, and this was the privilege and portion of the prophets; and it was possible, as it was not contrary to reason.
Biographical Note
Spinoza belonged to a family of Portuguese Jews settled in Amsterdam. He led an exemplary life; he was poor and apparently content to be so, since he refused help from his friends, which he might have accepted with a clear conscience; what he obtained by polishing spectacle lenses seems to have satisfied him. He was advised to dedicate one of his books to Louis XIV., a munificent patron of literary men, but he did not do so.
Ethics—the work to which he owes his fame—in accordance with his express wish, only appeared after his death, and without the name of the author, because, he said, the truth should go forth under no man’s name; he feared also to attach his to a new school of philosophy.
The Rabbis of Amsterdam had long sought to bring Spinoza into a more orthodox path than the one he trod; his idea that the institution of prophets had been a source of weakness rather than of strength to the Hebrew people, threatened to develop into a formal heresy.
The appearance in 1656 of Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, raised a storm of indignation; it was the only work of importance which he published during his lifetime; it was followed by a sentence of excommunication, read at the gate of the synagogue, and was in these terms:—
“In the name of the Angels and by a decree of the Saints, we anathematise and exorcise Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of the Sacred Books and the six hundred and thirty precepts they contain. Cursed be he by day and night; may the fury of the Lord consume this man, and may all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law light on him; may the Lord destroy him from amongst the tribes of Israel; let no man go near him, nor speak to him, nor write to him, nor show him any compassion.”