veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars. Yet further, you never enjoy the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than willingly be guilty of their error. There is so much blindness and ingratitude and damned folly in it." This is the flood-tide of the reaction against Puritanism-cynicism was not inevitable. The link between Traherne's discussion of happiness and the function of the State lies in his conception of justice. Justice is a severe vertue and will keep up all the Faculties of the Soul upon hard duty. For otherwise it would not pay to Felicity its due"-that is, since felicity is impossible without justice, the State is necessitated by the very nature of man. 66 This is a long digression. I will not apologise for it, because it illustrates precisely what is lacking in Harrington. To him the mover of the will, whether in a commonwealth or a monarchy, is interest, private or public. Public interest is in some ways more reputable than private interest. Harrington does not examine why. We are left to surmise that it is in some ways better to satisfy a large number than a few. In one passage alone, so far as I have discovered, Harrington explains that the State should aim at courage and wisdom, but whether in disregard of self-preservation, or in addition to it, he does not make clear. The remark occurs rather casually in defining the purpose of education in a passage already quoted, and Harrington lays no stress upon it. Professor Holdsworth says of Harrington that he is not primarily concerned with political theory, as were Hobbes or Locke, but merely propounds a practicable scheme under a disguise of fantasy. But in point of fact Harrington does attempt political theory, and it is for this reason that I have endeavoured to treat him rather as a political philosopher than as merely the composer of another Utopia. It is precisely the lack of clear-cut philosophic thought that places Harrington emphatically in the second rank of writers on politics. Again, it is precisely his lack of human vigour and sympathy, his dilettante life, his would-be ignoring of health, beauty, strength, 1 Centuries of Meditations. that makes his Utopia a cold and bloodless affair, in spite of his efforts to preserve some of the amenities of life, such as cathedrals, theatres, picturesque costumes, and country houses for every one! Man is a political animal, no doubt. Happily he is sometimes something more and something better. Utopia was built by More's love of beauty rather than by his love of politics. In Harrington we miss this serener air, and have to content ourselves with honesty, homely wit and shrewdness, and great ingenuity and curious foresight. Wordsworth did all that could be done for Harrington when he wrote: Great men have been among us; hands that penned Young Vane and others who called Milton friend. I would not say so much. I can make of Harrington neither a hero nor a villain, neither a guide nor a satisfactory heretic. Montesquieu pronounced, " Of him indeed it may be said that for want of knowing the nature of real liberty, he busied himself in the pursuit of an imaginary one." Indeed, he busied himself so much that I am conscious only of all that I have left unnoticed of what might reasonably, with the help of rainy days, have been said of Harrington and his vision of Oceana. The well is wide rather than deep, and one bucket is only too inadequate. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. E. LEVETT A. PRIMARY SOURCES HARRINGTON, JAMES: The Oceana and Other Works, collected by John Toland. BAXTER, RICHARD: A Holy Commonwealth. 1659. Dow, JOHN G.: "The Political Ideal of the English Commonwealth," in English Historical Review. 1891. DWIGHT, T. W.: "Harrington," in Political Science Quarterly (Columbia FIRTH, SIR C. H.: The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656-58. 1909. Goocн, G. P.: English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century. 1898. 1839. 1865. MAITLAND, F. W.: Collected Papers, vol. i, “A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality." 1911. MASSON, DAVID: The Life of John Milton. 1859-94. now first printed from the Author's manuscript, edited by Bertram Dobell. 1908. [TRAHERNE, THOMAS:] A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God, etc. 1699. TRAHERNE, THOMAS: Christian Ethicks. 1675. S IX BENEDICT SPINOZA PINOZA was born at Amsterdam in 1632. His parents belonged to a community of Jews from Portugal and Spain who had settled in the Netherlands a generation before, a small and closely knit people, who kept up their use of Portuguese and Spanish, but were full of gratitude for the liberty they had found in Holland. They were a learned community, and the young Spinoza was brought up both in Jewish learning and in the ordinary secular studies of the time. He was taught Latin by a certain Van der Ende, a doctor. He it was probably who introduced him to Descartes and to the science of the time. His community had learnt the lesson of toleration as ill as persecuted minorities usually learn it, and when Spinoza showed signs of unorthodoxy he was expelled and excommunicated in 1656, when he was twenty-three. He left Amsterdam and settled outside the city with a family of Remonstrants. He removed with them to near Leyden in 1661 and then moved to Voorburg, a suburb of The Hague, in 1664, and finally to The Hague itself, where he lived till his death in 1677. He maintained himself by the trade of making and polishing lenses for optical instruments, the practical side of the great sciences of the day, and gained great repute among the scientists of the time as an optician. In 1663 he published an exposition of Descartes' philosophy, and in 1670 not under his own name, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The book was prohibited by the States-General. He published nothing else in his lifetime, but his other writings and particularly the Ethic were circulated in manuscript to such friends as were thought trustworthy. Though Spinoza led a singularly quiet and retired life, he was yet in touch with the philosophical and scientific speculations of the time. Oldenburg, the first Secretary of the Royal Society, knew him well and corresponded with him regularly. Huygens and Leibnitz became acquainted with him and sought his advice on optical questions. Spinoza's system is sometimes thought of as the glorification of an impersonal abstraction: yet there is no philosopher whose personality shines out so commandingly in his works. Many readers who have neither the patience nor the ability to master much of the argumentation of parts of the Ethic are nevertheless mastered by the serenity, strength, and beauty of the personality which shines through a rather repellent form. No one can read the fourth and fifth books of the Ethic without feeling that he is being brought into contact with a singularly great and good man. All that we learn of him from his letters and from his biography confirms that impression. He lived simply and frugally, supporting himself by his craft, and devoting all his spare time to study and philosophic discussion. All who knew him seem to have been devoted to him. He was uniformly kind, cheerful, and without thought of personal advantage or resentment. The impression that his letters and his biography give is not merely that he was a good man, but that he was a saint. Yet this man raised against himself a greater storm of abuse than perhaps any other seventeenth-century writer. It became a commonplace that his works were blasphemous, atheistic, deceitful, soul-destroying." Sir Frederick Pollock relates that a certain Dr Bontekoe, writing two years after Spinoza's death, replied to the charge of atheism by saying: I will one day show the world what sort of an atheist I am, when I refute the godless works of Spinoza, and likewise those of Hobbes and Machiavelli, three of the most cursed villains that ever walked the earth." The eighteenth century was no better than the seventeenth in this regard. Hume refers to Spinoza's "hideous hypothesis" and "the sentiments for which Spinoza is so universally infamous." Universally infamous he was-his religious seriousness disgusted the French rationalists as much as his apparent materialism disgusted the orthodox, and universally infamous he remained for rather over a hundred years, when there were suddenly found persons who could understand the depth and greatness of his teaching, and the ordinary estimate of Spinoza changed completely. The German Romantics discovered Spinoza: first Lessing, then |