The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: The Philosophy of Spinoza

by John Watson

[Series of Modern Philosophers. Edited by E. Hershey Sneath, Ph.D.] The Philosophy of Spinoza as contained in the First, Second, and Fifth Parts of the Ethics, and in Extracts from the Third and Fourth. Translated from the Latin, and edited with Notes by George Stuart Fullerton, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1892. — pp. 204.

Every teacher of philosophy must have hailed with satisfaction the announcement that a "Series of Modern Philosophers," consisting of selections from their works, was to be issued under the editorial supervision of Dr. Sneath of Yale University. As I ventured to say in the Preface to my Selections from Kant (which, by the way, I am surprised and pleased to find included in the Series), "The teacher of philosophy soon finds that a very powerful irritant is needed to awaken his pupils from their 'dogmatic slumber.'" Nor is this process of awakening likely to succeed if the only means employed are general statements of philosophical systems. No doubt the teacher who has a firm grasp of the history of philosophy may do much even in that way to stimulate thought in his pupils; but the method of encouraging men to trust to lectures, or histories of philosophy, for their knowledge of the masters of thought, seems to me fatal to all real philosophical insight. What is wanted is that the student should get his knowledge at first hand. Direct contact with the mind of an original thinker like Spinoza has a stimulating influence and a suggestiveness that can never come from merely hearing what another man has to say about him. And as it is impossible to go over the whole of an author in the class-room, the next best thing is to study the characteristic passages in which he has set forth his system of thought. No doubt even this method is not ideally perfect, — for an author is best understood when he is read as a whole, — but it seems the best that is practically available. Now, if the books of this series are to be genuine instruments of philosophical culture, obviously three things are necessary: great care and judgment must be exercised in the selection of appropriate passages; if these are in a foreign tongue, there must be accuracy and finish in the translations; and the notes, if there are any, must be real aids to the comprehension of the author.

(1) There always will be more or less dissatisfaction with an editor's selections, but I think there is real ground for saying that Professor Fullerton has not been altogether judicious in the exercise of his editorial privilege. The extracts are entirely from the Ethics. Now the Ethics, no doubt, contains the system of Spinoza in its final form, but from the fact that Spinoza chose to set it forth ordine geometrico, it has the delusive air of being a piece of elaborate dogmatism built up from unproved definitions and from very questionable axioms and postulates. Hence the modern student who starts with the Ethics gets a false impression of Spinoza, and indeed he finds it almost impossible to enter with sympathy and intelligence into his way of thinking. He is told that Spinoza is a great thinker, but he cannot understand the process by which this great thinker has reached his results. The very first sentence he meets is an enigma. Per causam sui (he reads) intelligo id cujus essentia involvit existentiam. " Now what," he says to himself, "is this causa sui? what is the essentia of a causa sui? and why of this essentia is it said that it involvit existentiam?" I have supposed our student to be able to read Spinoza in the original; but if he belongs to the class for whom this book is intended, he will have to be content with Mr. Fullerton's translation: "By cause of itself I mean that the essence of which involves existence." If he makes any sense of this, he is not the man I take him for. But even if he had been dealt with more kindly, and there had been presented for his consideration some such words as these: "I call a thing self-caused when it is of such a nature that it cannot but exist," even then he would have his difficulties. The truth is, I believe, that the man who starts with the Ethics will find it almost impossible to make any headway. But why should he start with the Ethics? In the De Intellectus Emendatione Spinoza has given us a sort of autobiography of his spiritual development, in which he tries to explain how he raised himself from the limited point of view of ordinary thought to the wider vision of philosophy. Here, therefore, is the fit, and almost indispensable, introduction to Spinoza. The De Intellectus Emendatione ought, in my opinion, to have been given in full, as also the first thirteen propositions of Part III of the Ethics, together with the whole, or at least the first thirty-eight propositions of Part IV.

(2) It is impossible to speak highly of Mr. Fullerton's translations. In a work designed for the use of students, and meant to be self-interpreting, there ought to be nothing in the form to distract the reader's attention from the thought. Not only should the original be rendered accurately, but it should be done into idiomatic English. The translator, in other words, should be so saturated with the ideas of his author that his work shall seem to have issued straight from the mint of his own mind. Professor Fullerton apparently takes a different view. The function of a translator, he seems to think, is to render his author faithfully, i.e. word for word. And so closely does he adhere to this ideal, that he even (p. 25) translates hercle by its literal equivalent " by Hercules." Introduced in a modern book, and in the middle of a grave discussion about the nature of God, the unexpected apparition of this pagan demigod has rather a comic effect. Most translators would be content with "forsooth," or a mere mark of exclamation, or a slight emphasis in the form of sentence; but Professor Fullerton has a sterner conception of duty than that. Here is a specimen of the way in which he renders the simpler parts of the Ethics: "Wherefore the omnipotence of God has been from eternity actual, and to all eternity will remain in the same actuality. And thus there is established a — at least in my opinion — far more perfect omnipotence of God. Indeed, my opponents appear to deny (allow me to speak plainly) the omnipotence of God. For they are forced to admit that God apprehends as creatable an infinity of things which, nevertheless, he will never be able to create" (p. 40). The art of translating badly could hardly further go than this. Not only is the phrase "far more perfect omnipotence" nonsense, — the translator's nonsense; for Spinoza says nothing of the kind, — but "a — at least in my opinion — far more perfect omnipotence of God" is as pretty a "derangement of epitaphs" as I remember ever to have seen, and "apprehending as creatable an infinity of things" does not overwhelm one by its elegance. The meaning of Spinoza would perhaps have been better understood had the passage been turned somewhat thus: "The omnipotence of God has therefore been in activity from all eternity, and to all eternity will continue in activity. Thus, as I venture to think, God's omnipotence is placed upon a very much firmer basis than upon the view of our opponents; nay, to be quite frank, their doctrine seems to me to lead to a complete denial of God's omnipotence; for it forces them to admit that God has no power to create an infinite number of things of which he has a perfectly clear idea."

In his translation of more technical passages Mr. Fullerton is sometimes inaccurate, and almost always inadequate. For instance, definition 6 of Part I he translates thus (p. 19): "By God I mean a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes," etc. Now the phrase "infinite attributes" may mean either (a) attributes having the quality of infinity, or (b) attributes which are infinite in number. The latter is what Spinoza means, as is evident from proposition 9. Hence we should read: "By God I understand an absolutely infinite being, i.e. a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes." Again, the "explanation" of definition 8 is thus rendered: "For such existence, as eternal truth, is conceived as the essence of the thing." This is not the meaning of the original, if indeed it means anything. Spinoza's words are: Talis enim existentia ut eterna veritas, sicut rei existentia, concipitur; i.e. "For this sort of existence is just as certainly conceived as an eternal truth as is the nature of a thing." What Spinoza means is, that the existence of the "eternal," unlike the existence of the "temporal," follows from its mere idea or definition. It is an "eternal" — i.e. necessary — truth that every man is "rational," but not that Peter or James exists. On the other hand, God must exist because it is his very nature to exist. Thus the "existence" (existentia) as well as the "nature" (essentia) of God is an "eternal truth."

Take another instance. "Proposition 4. Proof. Everything that is, is either in itself or in something else, i.e. besides the understanding there is nothing but substances and their modifications. Besides the understanding, therefore, there is nothing by which a plurality of things could be distinguished from one another, except substances, or, which is the same thing (axiom 4), their attributes and their modifications." If extra intellectum means, as the translator supposes, "besides the understanding," we make Spinoza say that there are three kinds of existence: (1) understanding, (2) substances, (3) modifications; which is absurd, because understanding is itself a "modification." Again, Mr. Fullerton makes Spinoza say that the attributes and modifications of substances are identical with substances, which of course is not the meaning. Translate thus: "Whatever is, has its reality either in itself or in something else; in other words, there is no objective existence but substances and their affections. Hence things themselves, as contrasted with our conception of them, can be distinguished from one another only because they differ as substances — which is the same thing (by definition 4)^[1] as saying they differ in their attributes — or because they differ as modifications of substances."

There is only space for another quotation. "Wherefore they held it as certain that the judgments of the gods transcend in the highest degree man's power of comprehension: which would have been an excellent reason for truth's forever escaping the human race, if mathematics, which does not deal with limits, but only with the essences and properties of figures, had not shown men another norm of truth" (p. 60). Here Mathesis, quae non circa fines . . . versatur ("Mathematics, which has nothing to do with final causes") is actually rendered "mathematics, which does not deal with limits." Compare with Mr. Fullerton’s translation the version of Sir Frederick Pollock: "The further assumption was made that the counsels of the gods were beyond human understanding: which cause would have alone sufficed to hide the truth forever from mankind, had not the mathematics, which are concerned not with designed ends, but only with the nature and properties of figures, made manifest to them another pattern of truth."^[2]

(3) The aim of notes to such a volume as this ought to be to put the student at the point of view of the author; the aim, or at least the effect, of Mr. Fullerton's notes is to suggest that the attempt to get at the author's point of view must end in failure. No doubt we are told (p. 200) that the "thoughtful student will find in the Ethics a mine of precious ore," but this "mine" the writer has himself carefully abstained from working. In his very first sentence he sounds a false note. " Just what Spinoza meant by substance is not clear" (p. 188). As "substance" is Spinoza, the conclusion would seem to be that the Ethics is a hopeless riddle. The rest of Note 1 seems intended to show that nobody knows what Spinoza understood by the term "substance," nor did he clearly know himself; but probably he held both the Neo-Platonic conception of it as "Being without distinctions," and the totally different view that it was simply " the sum of the attributes"; i.e. "the sum total of existing things." Now, no one who has looked at things through Spinoza's eyes would admit that either alternative expressed his thought. No doubt it may be maintained, and not altogether unfairly, that there are elements in the philosophy of Spinoza, which, if they were developed to their logical consequences, would lead to the conception of "Being without distinctions"; but I have no hesitation in saying that Spinoza never conceived of his Substantia or Deus otherwise than as a Being determined by an infinity of predicates. And certainly he was just as far from regarding God as "the sum total of existing things." Substance is for Spinoza that Reality which contains within itself an inexhaustible fulness that is eternally pouring itself forth in the infinite variety of Nature and of Mind, as well as in innumerable forms not directly known to us. No increase or diminution of its boundless activity is possible. In the incessant changes of the physical universe this self-evolving Reality is partially expressed; and as its energy has been outflowing from all eternity, and is unlimited in extent, we can predicate infinite Extension or Omnipresence of it. So we can attribute to it an infinite Thought, which is partially manifested in the ideas that are perpetually welling up in the minds of all finite creatures, and revealing to them dimly and imperfectly the changes going on in the world of nature. But though God is thus present in all the fluctuations of matter and of mind, we cannot say that he is merely the "sum total of existing things." This view is excluded, if for no other reason than this, that they contain in their totality only a finite quantity of reality, while he contains an infinite quantity. Mr. Fullerton's "either — or "is therefore too narrow to embrace the depth and subtlety of Spinoza's thought. Nor does he seem to me any more successful in his attack on Spinoza's causa sui. "A thing," he says, "can no more be its own cause than it can be its own neighbor" (p. 189). This is a truly delightful piece of crude realism, on a level with the child's question, "Who made God?" Has Mr. Fullerton ever asked himself what is the cause of the universe as a whole? If he has, surely it has occurred to him that, as the universe has no outside, we can only explain its existence, if we use the term "cause" at all, by saying that it has no cause, or is "self-caused." And this is just what Spinoza, in his effort to find a term fitted to express his thought, has done. The Cartesian causa sui was there to his hand, and he freighted it with his own deeper thought, till it creaked and groaned under the unwonted burden. All this is hidden from Professor Fullerton, who sees in Spinoza's manipulation of the term nothing but an "endeavor to retain a relation between two things where but one thing is assumed to exist." Not thus is a man of Spinoza's quality refuted. The only satisfactory refutation of him is that which history has pronounced in the evolution of his philosophy into a deeper and wider system of thought.

It is with great regret and reluctance that I find myself forced to express so unfavorable an opinion of this book. The excellence of Mr. Fullerton's original contributions to philosophy had led me to expect something very different; and I can only suppose that in a rash moment he undertook to edit an author with whom he was unfamiliar and with whose philosophy his realistic habits of thought unfit him to sympathize.

John Watson.

1. Mr. Fullerton, following the reading of the ordinary text, gives axiom 4 as the reference. The correction is made in Van Vloten & Land's edition, which surely he ought to have followed.
2. Pollock's Spinoza, p. 350.