SPINOZA: 1G77 AND 1877. 221 



ate regions. What he for liis part needs is the glacier-air, keen ancl 

 penetrating. He does not ask to be followed ; he is like Tyloses to 

 whom secrets unknown to the crowd reveal themselves on the hei"-hts. 

 But be sure of this : he was the seer of his age ; he was in his own 

 day the one who saw deepest into God. 



III. 



It might have been supposed that, all alone on those snowy peaks 

 he would turn out in human affairs wrong-headed, Utopian, or scorn- 

 fully skeptical. Nothing of the kind. He was incessantly occupied 

 with the application of his principles to human society. The pessi- 

 mism of Hobbes and the dreams of Thomas More were equally repuo-- 

 nant to him. One-half, at least, of the " Theologico-Political Trea- 

 tise" which appeared in 1670, might be reprinted to-day without 

 losing any of its ajjpropriateness. Listen to its admirable title: 

 " Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, continens dissertationes aliquot, 

 quibus ostenditur, libertatem philosophandi non tantum salva pietate 

 et reipublicte pace posse concedi, sed eamdera nisi cum pace reipu- 

 blicge ijjsaque pietate tolli non posse." For centuries past it had been 

 supposed that society rested on metaphysical dogmas. Spinoza dis- 

 cerns profoundly that these dogmas, assumed to be necessary to 

 humanity, yet cannot escape discussion ; that revelation itself, if there 

 be one, traversing, in order to reach us, the faculties of the human 

 mind, is no less than all else amenable to criticism. I wish I could 

 quote in its entirety that admirable Chapter XX., in which our great 

 publicist establishes with masterly skill that dogma new then, and 

 still contested in our own day which styles itself liberty of con- 

 science. 



" The final end of the state," he says, " consists not in dominating over 

 men, restraining them by fears, subjecting them to the will of others, but, on 

 the contrary, in permitting each one to live in all possible security ; that is to 

 say, in preserving intact the natural right of each to live without injury to him- 

 self or others. No, I say, the state has not for its end the transformation of 

 men from reasonable beings into animals or automata; it has for end so to 

 act that its citizens should in security develop soul and body, and make free use 

 of their reason. Hence the true end of the state is liberty. Whosoever means 

 to respect the riglits of a sovereign should never act in opposition to his 

 decrees; but each has the right to think what he will, and to say what he thinks, 

 provided he content himself with speaking and teaching in the name of pure 

 reason, and do not attempt on his private authority to introduce innovations 

 into the state. For example: a citizen who demonstrates that a certain law is 

 repugnant to sound reason, and holds that for that cause it ought to be abro- 

 gated if he submit his opinions to the judgment of the sovereign, to wliom 

 alone it belongs to establish and to abolish laws, and if meanwhile he acts in no 

 wise contrary to law that man certainly deserves well of the state as the best 

 of citizens. ... 



" Even if we admit the possibihty of so stifling men's liberty and laying 

 such a yoke upon them that they dare not even whisper without the approba- 



