" he sihove the rest. In shape and gestuic pinndly eminent.
. . . h\ merit iiiised To that bad eminence."
We cannot enter into the details of tins treatise, signifi- cant as they are. Tiiey are not Spinoza's |)hilosophy, though they are concomitants of his philosophy. The treatise, though first in order of publication, was a con- sequence rather tiian a cause of liis philoso])hy. which was not fairly exhil>ited during his lifetime. The Eth- ica, whicli is liis philosophy, was apparently constructed between IGG-Jaiid IGGo, but not published till 1G77, among his Opera Poslhuina, which contained, besides his Ti-ac- tatus Politicus, his Tractutus de Intellectus Emendatione, Epistolce iJoctorum Virorum,nnd Ids Coinpendium Gram- matics Lin(jU(e Uebraica. His Riformation if the Un- derstandinfi and his Ethics will be noticed under the head of his Philosophy; so will tlie Litlirs, as tar as may be found expedient, for they are chiefly comments upon
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his doctrine. The Tractatus Politicus was pcriiaps suiififMed by The Leriathuii of Holibes. but liifters great- Iv from it in spirit ami conchisioii. tliouirh larfcely ac- cordant with it in general proci'duro. Ilol)bes favored despotic authority. Spinoza uplulil regulated and ra- tional freeiloin under every form of government. Arbi- trarv restraints were foreign to liis mental and moral habits, ami had been rendered repugnant to him by the bitter ex|K>riences of himself and of his teacher. Van den Knde. The llihreir dm in mar reipiires no further com- memoration. Several other works have been ascribed, correctly or incorrectly, to Spinoza. Some of them have Iwen lost. A number of marginal notes have been pre- served and published. A little treatise of much interest was discovered and printed several years ago. This is the Korle I'trluimMiiit; ran God, de Mm.ich en deszelfs W'rUttiiid. It is preserved in the Dutch version, not in the ori::inal text. The chief value of the essay is that it contains clear indications of the peculiar doctrines of Spinoza, and gives the earliest view of them. It was probably com|)osed before lljtJl ; possibly as early as lt>.H-o. In the latter case, Spinoza would have been only twenty-two or twenty-three at the time. It thus reveals the precocity of his scheme and the singular consistency of his intellectual development. Tlie chron- ological order of Spinoza's works thus ap|iears to have been almost exactly the reverse of their order of publi- cation. There is a somewhat analogous indication in the development of his philosophy. His conclusions seem to have been first settled, then principles discov- ered for them, then detinitionsand axioms invented, and then demonstrations devised. This will exjilain the er- ror of the dogmas, the arbitrariness and invalidity of the premises, and their singularly logical evolution into the anticipated residts.
III. PhUosophi). — With an author so systematic as Spinoza, so curious in the establishment of all details, so methodically scrupulous in their demonstration and con- cateuation, it is impossible to deal, in a work of this kind, otherwise than by a summary treatment of his most distinctive principles. A full and formal exam- ination would demand as close and as minute a criticism as was bestowed by Leibnitz upon Locke's Essay on the J/iimtin Understdndim/. Book by book, paragraph by paragraph, would have to be tested. For such a pro- ceeding there is no room here. A bird's-eye view must Bulhce. The details of any philosophy are, however, of secondary importance. If correctly established, they flow of necessity from the priuci|)les; if incorrectly de- duced, they may discredit the philosopher, but they are no fair exhibition of the jjliilosophy, and may be disre- garded in a brief estimate of its character and value. The method is the chief concern. The principles come next, and they are usually determined, in large meas- ure, by the method. All. then, that can be attempted at present will he to point out the characteristic pro- cedure of Spinoza, and his fundamental principles. These determine and distinguish the philosophy, in its essence, its type, ami its worth. For the purpose con- templated two of Spinoza's works will suffice— the Ref- oiimitioH of the I'ndiistiindiii;/, which (tresents a frag- mentary view of his method, and the Klhirs, which con- tain his philosophy. The Letlirs are chietly elucida- tions of the doctrine.
The trcatis<' on the Riforimtlion of the Understanding wa« a posthumous work, and was left a fragment. Its comiHisition. in JtM (irst draft, prol)ably dates hack to the periorl fiilldwiiig the commencement of the Klhirs^ to which work it may wrve as an inlrodiulion. Unlin- iHheil ns it is, it tnay exjilain the philosophical tenden- cies, the phil<>M>phical relations, and the philosophical pHH-'edure of its author. Spinoza had lieeu inducted into speculative pursuits by the study of the works of DcH ('Hrtes. His (jrst publication was an alisiract of ("nrleHinuism, lie was ("nrlesian by d.scent. Cartesian liy iiitelleciual liiibii, an<l remained (artesian to the end. lie was, iriil.ed, hyper-Carl esian, as Leibnitz rec-