“By the desire which springs from reason we follow good directly and avoid evil indirectly” [42b]: our aim should be the good; in obtaining that we are delivered from evil. To the same purpose is the conclusion of the fifth book of the Ethic that “No one delights in blessedness because he has restrained his affects, but, on the contrary, the power of restraining his lusts springs from blessedness itself.” [43a] This is exactly what the Gospel says to the Law.
Fear is not the motive of a free man to do what is good. “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation upon death, but upon life.” [43b] This is the celebrated sixty-seventh proposition of the fourth part. If we examine the proof which directly depends on the sixty-third proposition of the same part—“he who is led by fear, and does what is good in order that he may avoid what is evil, is not led by reason”—we shall see that Spinoza is referring to the fear of the “evil” of hell-fire.
All Spinoza’s teaching with regard to the passions is a consequence of what he believes of God and man. He will study the passions and not curse them. He finds that by understanding them “we can bring it to pass that we suffer less from them. We have, therefore, mainly to strive to acquire a clear and distinct knowledge of each affect.” [43c] “If the human mind had none but adequate ideas it would form no notion of evil.” [44a] “The difference between a man who is led by affect or opinion alone and one who is led by reason” is that “the former, whether he wills it or not, does those things of which he is entirely ignorant, but the latter does the will of no one but himself.” [44b] They know not what they do.
The direct influence of Spinoza’s theology is also shown in his treatment of pity, hatred, laughter, and contempt. “The man who has properly understood that everything follows from the necessity of the divine nature, and comes to pass according to the eternal laws and rules of nature, will in truth discover nothing which is worthy of hatred, laughter, or contempt, nor will he pity any one, but, so far as human virtue is able, he will endeavour to do well, as we say, and to rejoice.” [44c] By pity is to be understood mere blind sympathy. The good that we do by this pity with the eyes of the mind shut ought to be done with them open. “He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. . . . He who wishes to avenge injuries by hating in return does indeed live miserably. But he who, on the contrary, strives to drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with equal ease resisting one man or a number of men, and needing scarcely any assistance from fortune. Those whom he conquers yield gladly, not from defect of strength, but from an increase of it.” [45a]
“Joy is the passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection: sorrow, on the other hand, is the passion by which it passes to a less perfection.” [45b] “No God and no human being, except an envious one, is delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and other things of this kind, which are signs of mental impotence; on the contrary, the greater the joy with which we are affected, the greater the perfection to which we pass thereby; that is to say, the more do we necessarily partake of the divine nature.” [46] It would be difficult to find an account of joy and sorrow which is closer to the facts than that which Spinoza gives. He lived amongst people Roman Catholic and Protestant who worshipped sorrow. Sorrow was the divinely decreed law of life and joy was merely a permitted exception. He reversed this order and his claim to be considered in this respect as one of the great revolutionary religious and moral reformers has not been sufficiently recognised. It is remarkable that, unlike other reformers, he has not contradicted error by an exaggeration, which itself very soon stands in need of contradiction, but by simple sanity which requires no correction. One reason for this peculiarity is that the Ethic was the result of long meditation. It was published posthumously and was discussed in draft for many years before his death. Usually what we call our convictions are propositions which we have not thoroughly examined in quietude, but notions which have just come into our heads and are irreversible to us solely because we are committed to them. Much may be urged against the Ethic and on behalf of hatred, contempt, and sorrow. The “other side” may be produced mechanically to almost every truth; the more easily, the more divine that truth is, and against no truths is it producible with less genuine mental effort than against those uttered by the founder of Christianity. The question, however, if we are dealing with the New Testament, is not whether the Sermon on the Mount can be turned inside out in a debating society, but whether it does not represent better than anything which the clever leader of the opposition can formulate the principle or temper which should govern our conduct.
There is a group of propositions in the last part of the Ethic, which, although they are difficult, it may be well to notice, because they were evidently regarded by Spinoza as helping him to the end he had in view. The difficulty lies in a peculiar combination of religious ideas and scientific form. These propositions are the following:—[47]
“The mind can cause all the affections of the body or the images of things to be related to the idea of God.”
“He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his affects loves God, and loves Him better the better he understands himself and his affects.”
“This love to God above everything else ought to occupy the mind.”
“God is free from passions, nor is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow.”
“No one can hate God.”
“He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return.”
“This love to God cannot be defiled either by the effect of envy or jealousy, but is the more strengthened the more people we imagine to be connected with God by the same bond of love.”
The proof of the first of these propositions, using language somewhat different from that of the text, is as follows:—There is no affection of the body of which the mind cannot form some clear and distinct conception, that is to say, of everything perceived it is capable of forming a clear and adequate idea, not exhaustive, as Spinoza is careful to warn us, but an idea not distorted by our personality, and one which is in accordance with the thing itself, adequate as far as it goes. Newton’s perception that the moon perpetually falls to the earth by the same numerical law under which a stone falls to it was an adequate perception. “Therefore,” continues the demonstration (quoting the fifteenth proposition of the first part—“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God”), “the mind can cause all the affections of the body to be related to the idea of God.” Spinoza, having arrived at his adequate idea thus takes a further step to the idea of God. What is perceived is not an isolated external phenomenon. It is a reality in God: it is God: there is nothing more to be thought or said of God than the affirmation of such realities as these. The “relation to the idea of God” means that in the affirmation He is affirmed. “Nothing,” that is to say, no reality “can be conceived without God.”
But it is possible for the word “love” to be applied to the relationship between man and God. He who has a clear and adequate perception passes to greater perfection, and therefore rejoices. Joy, accompanied with the idea of a cause, is love. By the fourteenth proposition this joy is accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, and therefore love to God follows. The demonstration seems formal, and we ask ourselves, What is the actual emotion which Spinoza describes? It is not new to him, for in the Short Treatise, which is an early sketch for the Ethic, he thus writes:—“Hence it follows incontrovertibly that it is knowledge which is the cause of love, so that when we learn to know God in this way, we must necessarily unite ourselves to Him, for He cannot be known, nor can he reveal Himself, save as that which is supremely great and good. In this union alone, as we have already said, our happiness consists. I do not say that we must know Him adequately; but it is sufficient for us, in order to be united with Him, to know Him in a measure, for the knowledge we have of the body is not of such a kind that we can know it as it is or perfectly; and yet what a union! what love!” [50]
Perhaps it may clear the ground a little if we observe that Spinoza often avoids a negative by a positive statement. Here he may intend to show us what the love of God is not, that it is not what it is described in the popular religion to be. “The only love of God I know,” we may imagine him saying, “thus arises. The adequate perception is the keenest of human joys for thereby I see God Himself. That which I see is not a thing or a person, but nevertheless what I feel towards it can be called by no other name than love. Although the object of this love is not thing or person it is not indefinite, it is this only which is definite; ‘thing’ and ‘person’ are abstract and unreal. There was a love to God in Kepler’s heart when the three laws were revealed to him. If it was not love to God, what is love to Him?”