of Innate Ideas have ever combated. If Descartes, when pressed by objections, gave different explanations, we must only set it down to the want of a steady conception of the vital importance of Innate Ideas to his system. The fact remains that Innate Ideas form the necessary groundwork of the Cartesian doctrine.

Although the theory of Innate Ideas may, in its Cartesian form, be said to be exploded, it does really continue to be upheld under a new form. A conviction of the paramount necessity of some such groundwork for metaphysical speculation has led to the modern theory of Necessary Truths. This plausible theory has been adopted by Dr. Whewell in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; but his arguments have been completely shattered by John Mill on the one hand, and by Sir John Herschel on the other.* We may for the present assume the point to be settled.

The radical error of all ontological speculations lies in assumption that we have ideas independent of experience; because experience can only tell us of ourselves or of phenomena; of noumena it can tell us nothing. That we have no such ideas has been clearly enough established in the best schools of psychology; but the existenee of metaphysical speculation proves that the contrary opinion still exists.

The fundamental question then of modern Philosophy is this, Have we any Ideas independent

*System of Logic,' book ii. ch. 5; and 'Quarterly Rev.,' June, 1841; indeed, they had been anticipated and refuted by Locke long before; but Dr. Whewell has apparently too great a contempt for Locke to be convinced by any argument of his. See Essay,' book iv. ch. 6-7.

of experience? And the attempts to solve it will occupy the greater portion of our history. Before entering upon this subject we must exhibit the Method of Descartes, pushed to its ultimate conclusions in Spinoza.*

* The best modern works on Descartes, apart from regular Histories of Philosophy, are M. Francisque Boullier's Histoire et Critique de la Révolution Cartésienne.' Paris, 1842; and M. Ch. Renouvier's 'Manuel de la Philos. Moderne.' Paris, 1841. The best edition of Descartes' works is that by Victor Cousin, in eleven vols., 8vo. Paris, 1826. M. Jules Simon has also published a cheap and convenient edition in one volume of the 'Discourse on Method,' the Meditations and the Treatise on the Passions.' Paris, 1844.

CHAPTER V.*

SPINOZA'S LIFE.

EARLY in the seventeenth century, on a fair evening of summer, a little Jewish boy was playing with his sisters on the Burgwal of Amsterdam, close to the Portuguese synagogue. His face was mild and ingenuous; his eyes were small, but bright, quick, and penetrative; and the dark hair floated in luxuriant curls over his neck and shoulders. Noticeable, perhaps, for nothing but his beauty and joyousness, the little boy played on unmarked amongst the active citizens of that active town. The Dutch then occupied the thoughtful attention of all Europe. After having first conquered for themselves firm footing on this earth, by rescuing their country from the sea, they had thrown off the oppressive yoke of the mighty Spain; and had now conquered for themselves a freedom from that far greater tyranny, the tyranny of thought.

Amsterdam was noisy with the creaking of cordage, the bawling of sailors, and the busy trafficking of traders. The Zuyder Zee was crowded with vessels, laden with precious stores from all quarters of the globe. The canals which ramify that city, like a great arterial system, were blocked up with

* In this account of Spinoza is incorporated the greater part of an article by the present writer which appeared in the 'Westminster Review,' No. lxxvii.

boats and barges: the whole scene was vivid with the greatness and the littleness of commerce. Heedless of all this turmoil, as unheeded in it-heedless of all those higher mysteries of existence the solution of which was hereafter to be the endeavour of his life untouched by any of those strange questionings which a restless spirit cannot answer, but which it refuses to have answered by others-heedless of everything but his game, that little boy played merrily with his sisters. That boy was Benedict Spinoza.

It is pleasant to think of Spinoza as a boy, playing at boyish games. He has for so long been the bugbear of theologians, and of timid thinkers; he has for so long been looked upon as a monster, an atheist, and (to add to the horror) a Jewish atheist ; and looked upon, even by those who were not so aghast at the consequences of his system, as nothing more than a frigid logician, that we dwell with singular pleasure on any more human aspect of his character. We hope, ere we have done, to convince the reader that this rigorous logician was a wise and virtuous and affectionate man.

His parents were honest merchants of Amsterdam, who had settled there in company with a number of their brethren, on escaping the persecution to which all Jews were subject in Spain. The young Baruch was at first destined to commerce, but his passion for study, and the precocity of his intellect, made his parents alter their resolution in favour of a rabbinical education: a resolution

*

Baruch was Spinoza's Hebrew name, which he himself translated into Latin as Benedictus; from which some have erroneously supposed that he embraced Christianity, whereas he only renounced Judaism.

warranted by his sickly constitution, which had increased his love of study. The sickly child is mostly thoughtful: he is thrown upon himself, and his own resources; he suffers, and asks himself the cause of his pains, and asks himself whether the world suffers like him; whether he is one with nature, and subject to the same laws, or whether he is apart from it, and regulated by distinct laws. From these he rises to the awful questions Why? Whence? and Whither?

The education of the Jews was almost exclusively religious, the Old Testament and the Talmud forming their principal studies. Spinoza entered into them with a fanatical zeal, which, backed as it was by remarkable penetration and subtlety, won the admiration of the Chief Rabbin Saul Levi Morteira, who became his guide and instructor. Great, indeed, were the hopes entertained of this youth, who at fourteen rivalled almost all the doctors in the exactitude and extent of his biblical knowledge. But these hopes were turned to fears, when they saw that young and pertinacious spirit pursue its undaunted inquiries into whatever region they conducted him, and found him putting difficulties to them which they, rabbins and philosophers, were unable to solve.

Spinoza was to be deterred neither by threats nor by sophistications. He found in the Old Testament no mention of the doctrine of immortality: there was complete silence on the point.* He

*On this silence Warburton endeavoured to establish the divinity of the Legation of Moses; and Bishop Sherlock has exerted considerable ingenuity in explaining the discrepancy which sceptics had seized hold of as an argument in their favour.