BARUCH SPINOZA,

SPINOZA, BARUCH, a famous Dutch philosopher, of Jewish parentage; born at Amsterdam, November 24, 1632; died at The Hague, February 21, 1677. He Latinized his name of Baruch into BENEDICTUS, by which he is usually designated. He received a careful Rabbinical training; but at an early age he began to hold heterodox opinions, and was repeatedly summoned before a Rabbinical Council. As he failed to appear, the anathema maranatha was pronounced against him in 1656. At the urgency of the Rabbis he was banished from Amsterdam, and finally took up his residence at The Hague, where he devoted himself to speculative philosophy. In 1673 he was offered a professorship in the University of Marburg, which he declined. During his lifetime Spinoza put forth several profound treatises, but he withheld several of his most notable works, which were not published until after his death. Among these are the "Ethica," the "Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione," the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus." The First Book of his "Ethica" contains a series of "Definitions" and "Axioms," which may be regarded as the basis of his philosophical system.

SUPERSTITION AND FEAR.

MEN would never be superstitious if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune; but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swerved this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery; though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though few, I believe, know their own nature: no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in pros

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perity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be) that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult; whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair; if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being; and mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically.

Thus it is brought prominently before us that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!

Superstition then is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. If any one desire an example, let him take Alexander, who only began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learnt to fear fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius, v. 4); whereas after he had conquered Darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. When the Scythians were provoking a battle, the Bactrians had deserted and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue of affairs with sacrificed victims." Very numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact that only

while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the State is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.

The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of credulity. For as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty which has not yet proved illusive.

This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for as Curtius well says (Lib. iv., chap. 10), "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious. reverence by the whole people; a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with.

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear which keeps them down with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free State no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's