not to be wondered at, considering the total neglect into which his works have long fallen. It is only in this way I can account for the frequent use which has most unfairly been made of the term Spinozism to stigmatize and discredit some doctrines, or rather some modes of speaking, which have been sanctioned, not only by the wisest of the ancients, but by the highest names in English philosophy and literature; and which, whether right or wrong, will be found, on a careful examination and comparison, not to have the most distant affinity to the absurd creed with which they have been confounded. I am afraid that Pope, in the following lines of the Dunciad, suffered himself so far to be misled by the malignity of Warburton, as to aim a secret stab at Newton and Clarke, by associating their figurative, and not altogether unexceptionable language, concerning space (when they called it the sensorium of the Deity), with the opinion of Spinoza, as I have just explained it.* "Thrust some Mechanic Cause into His place, Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space." How little was it suspected by the poet, when this sarcasm escaped him, that the charge of Spinozism and Pantheism was afterwards to be brought against himself, for the sublimest passage to be found in his writings! "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. Lives through all life, extends through all extent, and what a contrast does it afford to the sentiment of one of Nero's successors, who was himself a philosopher in the best sense of the word, and whose reign furnishes some of the fairest pages in the annals of the human race! "I search for truth," says Marcus Antoninus, "by which no person has ever been injured." Znra yag τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ὑφ' ἧς οὐδεὶς πώποτε ἐβλάβη. * Warburton, indeed, always professes great respect for Newton, but of his hostility to Clarke it is unnecessary to produce any other proof than his note on the following line of the Dunciad : "Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores." May I venture to add that the noted line of the Essay on Man, could not possibly have been written by any person impressed with a due veneration for this glory of his species? This passage (as Warton has remarked) bears a very striking analogy to a noble Bayle was, I think, the writer who first led the way to this misapplication of the term Spinozism; and his object in doing so, was plainly to destroy the effect of the most refined and philosophical conceptions of the Deity which were ever formed by the unassisted power of human reason. "Estne Dei sedes nisi terra, et pontus, et aër, Et cœlum, et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Rowe's Lucan. Who but Bayle, could have thought of extracting anything like Spinozism from such verses as these! On a subject so infinitely disproportioned to our faculties, it is vain to expect language will bear a logical and captious examination. Even the Sacred Writers themselves are forced to adapt their phraseology to the comprehension of those to whom it is addressed, and frequently borrow the figurative diction of poetry to convey ideas which must be interpreted, not according to the letter, but the spirit of the passage. It is thus that thunder is called the voice of God; the wind, His breath; and the tempest, the blast of His nostrils. Not attending to this circumstance, or rather not choosing to direct to it the attention of his readers, Spinoza has laid hold of the well known expression of St. Paul, that "in God we live, and move, and have our being," as a proof that the ideas of the apostle, concerning the Divine Nature, were pretty much the same with his own; a consideration which, if duly weighed, might have protected some of the passages one in the old Orphic verses quoted in the treatise Igì xóous, ascribed to Aristotle ; and it is not a little curious, that the same ideas occur in some specimens of Hindoo poetry, translated by Sir W. Jones; more particularly in the Hymn to Narrayna, or the Spirit of God, taken, as he informs us, from the writings of their ancient authors: "Omniscient Spirit, whose all-ruling power Bids from each sense bright emanations beam; above quoted from the uncharitable criticisms to which they have frequently been exposed.* To return, however, to Collins, from whose controversy with Clarke I was insensibly led aside into this short digression about Spinoza: I have already said, that it seems to have been the aim of Collins to vindicate the doctrine of Necessity from the reproach brought on it by its supposed alliance with Spinozism; and to retort upon the partizans of free-will the charges of favoring atheism and immorality. In proof of this I have only to quote the account, given by the author himself, of the plan of his work: "Too much care cannot be taken to prevent being misunderstood and prejudged, in handling questions of such nice speculation as those of Liberty and Necessity; and, therefore, though I might in justice expect to be * Mr. Gibbon, in commenting upon the celebrated lines of Virgil, "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet," observes, that "the mind which is INFUSED into the different parts of matter, and which MINGLES ITSELF with the mighty mass, scarcely retains any property of a spiritual substance, and bears too near an affinity to the principles which the impious Spinoza revived rather than invented." He adds, however, that " the poverty of human language, and the obscurity of human ideas, make it difficult to speak worthily of the GREAT FIRST CAUSE; and that our most religious poets (particularly Pope and Thomson), in striving to express the presence and energy of the Deity in every part of the universe, deviate unwarily into images which require a favorable construction. But these writers," he candidly remarks," deserve that favor, by the sublime manner in which they celebrate the Great Father of the universe, and by those effusions of love and gratitude which are inconsistent with the materialist's system." (Misc. Works. Vol. II. pp. 509, 510.) May I be permitted here to remark, that it is not only difficult but impossible to speak of the omnipresence or omnipotence of God, without deviating into such images? With the doctrine of the Animus Mundi, some philosophers, both ancient and modern, have connected another theory, according to which the souls of men are portions of the Supreme Being, with whom they are re-united at death, and in whom they are finally absorbed and lost. To assist the imagination in conceiving this theory, death has been compared to the breaking of a phial of water, immersed in the ocean. It is needless to say, that this incomprehensible jargon has no necessary connexion with the doctrine which represents God as the soul of the world, and that it would have been loudly disclaimed, not only by Pope and Thomson, but by Epictetus, Antoninus, and all the wisest and soberest of the Stoical school. Whatever objections, therefore, may be made to this doctrine, let not its supposed consequences be charged upon any but those who may expressly avow them. "On such a subject," as Gibbon has well remarked, "we should be slow to suspect, and still slower to condemn." (Ibid, p. 510.) Sir William Jones mentions a very curious modification of this theory of absorp tion, as one of the doctrines of the Vedanta school. "The Vedanta school represents Elysian happiness as a total absorption, though not such as to destroy consciousness, in the Divine Essence." (Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India.) read before any judgment be passed on me, I think it proper to premise the following observations: "First, Though I deny liberty in a certain meaning of that word, yet I contend for liberty, as it signifies a power in man to do as he wills or pleases. 66 Secondly, When I affirm necessity, I contend only for moral necessity; meaning thereby, that man, who is an intelligent and sensible being, is determined by his reason and his senses; and I deny man to be subject to such necessity, as is in clocks, watches, and such other beings, which, for want of sensation and intelligence, are subject to an absolute, physical, or mechanical necessity. Thirdly, I have undertaken to show, that the notions I advance are so far from being inconsistent with, that they are the sole foundations of morality and laws, and of rewards and punishments in society; and that the notions I explode are subversive of them." * In the prosecution of his argument on this question, Collins endeavours to show, that man is a necessary agent, 1. From our experience. (By experience he means our own consciousness that we are necessary agents.) 2. From the impossibility of liberty.† 3. From the consideration of the Divine prescience. 4. From the nature and use of rewards and punishments; and, 5. From the nature of morality. ‡ In this view of the subject, and, indeed, in the very selection of his premises, it is remarkable how completely Collins has anticipated Dr. Jonathan Edwards, the most celebrated, and indisputably the ablest champion of the scheme of Necessity who has since appeared. The coincidence is so perfect, that the outline given by the former, of the plan of his work, might have served with equal propriety as a preface to that of the latter. From the above summary, and still more from the whole tenor of the Philosophical Inquiry, it is evident, that Collins (one of the most obnoxious writers of his day to divines of all denominations) was not less solicitous than his successor Edwards to reconcile his meta * A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty. 3d Ed. Lond. 1735. † See Note (1i.) t See Note (Jj.) 36 VOL. VI. physical notions with man's accountableness and moral agency. The remarks, accordingly, of Clarke upon Collins's work, are equally applicable to that of Edwards. It is to be regretted that they seem never to have fallen into the hands of this very acute and honest reasoner. As for Collins, it is a remarkable circumstance, that he attempted no reply to this tract of Clarke's, although he lived twelve years after its publication. The reasonings contained in it, together with those on the same subject in his correspondence with Leibnitz, and in his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, form, in my humble opinion, the most important as well as powerful of all his metaphysical arguments.* The adversaries with whom he had to contend were, both of them, eminently distinguished by ingenuity and subtilty, and he seems to have put forth to the utmost his logical strength, in contending with such antagonists. "The liberty or moral agency of man," says his friend, Bishop Hoadly, "was a darling point to him. He excelled always, and showed a superiority to all, whenever it came into private discourse or public debate. But he never more excelled than when he was pressed with the strength Leibnitz was master of; which made him exert all his talents to set it once again in a clear light, to guard it against the evil of metaphysical obscurities, and to give the finishing stroke to a subject which must ever be the foundation of morality in man, and is the ground of the accountableness of intelligent creatures for all their actions." † It is needless to say, that neither Leibnitz nor Collins admitted the fairness of the inferences which Clarke conceived to follow from the scheme of necessity: But • Voltaire, who, in all probability, never read either Clarke or Collins, has said that the former replied to the latter only by Theological reasonings : "Clarke n'a répondu à Collins qu'en Théologien." (Quest. sur l'Encyclopédie, Art. Liberté.) Nothing can be more remote from the truth. The argument of Clarke is wholly Metaphysical; whereas, his antagonist, in various instances, has attempted to wrest to his own purposes the words of Scripture. Preface to the Folio Ed. of Clarke's Works.-The vital importance which Clarke attached to this question, has given to the concluding paragraphs of his remarks on Collins, an earnestness and a solemnity of which there are not many instances in his writings. These paragraphs cannot be too strongly recommended to the attention of those well-meaning persons, who, in our own times, have come forward as the apostles of Dr. Priestley's "great and glorious Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity." |