Spinoza, BENEDICT (Benedictus being a translation of the Hebrew Baruch), one of the greatest philosophers of modern times, was born at Amsterdam on the 24th of November 1632. His parents were rich Spanish or Portuguese Jews, whose name (also spelt D'Espinoza and Despinoza) seems to have been derived from a village called Espinoza in Leon. They had their son diligently instructed in the Bible and its commentaries, and the Talmud; but after having mastered both, and inhaled the philosophical spirit of such commentators as Aben Ezra, he was allowed—the more readily that his sickly constitution unfitted him for a commercial career—to devote himself entirely to a life of study. Physical sciences and the writings of Descartes, to which he turned first of all, very soon drew him away from the rigid belief and practices of the synagogue; and Saul Levi Morteira, his Talmudical teacher, who had built the fondest hopes upon the genius of his pupil, was the first to threaten him with the direst punishment if he did not retract the rank heresies that he began openly to utter. Spinoza, after a time, entirely withdrew from the community of his brethren, who formally excommunicated him (1656). A fanatic even attempted to frighten him by an either real or feigned attack upon him as he left the synagogue one night. At that period the young truth-seeker made the acquaintance of the young and beautiful daughter of Van den Ende, his master in Greek and Latin, and fell passionately in love with her, but was rejected. From that time forth Philosophy became the sole aim and object of his life. In accordance with the teachings of the sages of the Mishna, Spinoza had, apart from his studies, made himself master of a mechanical craft; he had learned the art of polishing lenses, and this now became the means of his subsistence.
When twenty-eight years old he left Amsterdam, and went to Rijnsburg, near Leyden, then the headquarters of a sect of the Remonstrants or Arminians, known as Collegiants, with one of whom he lived; and there he wrote the Abridgment of the Meditations of Descartes, with an Appendix—the latter being the first draft, so to say, of his Ethics. The year following he removed to Voorburg, a suburb of the Hague, and shortly afterwards, yielding to the solicitations of his, by this time, numerous friends, he removed to the Hague itself. The Elector Palatine, Charles Louis, next offered him a vacant chair at the university of Heidelberg, with full 'liberty of teaching,' provided he would not say aught to prejudice the established religion—i.e. Christianity; but Spinoza declined the lucrative and honourable professorship. His small pittance was enough to satisfy his wants. Similarly he refused generous offers made to him by wealthy friends, like Simon de Vries, who intended to bestow a large sum of money upon him; all he could be prevailed upon to accept was a small annuity of a few hundred florins. An offer of a pension, on the condition of his dedicating a work to Louis XIV., he rejected with scorn. His domestic accounts, found after his death, show that he preferred to live on a few pence a day rather than be indebted to another's bounty. He died, forty-four years old, on the 21st of February 1677. Throughout his life of study, of abstemiousness, of bodily and mental suffering—for his constitution was no less undermined by consumption and overwork than his sensitive mind was wrought upon by the violent severance of all natural ties of affection, to say nothing of the misery of occasional want and of perpetual persecution—no complaint ever passed his lips. Simplicity and heroic forbearance, coupled with an antique stoicism and a child-like, warm, sympathising heart, were the outstanding features of him who was nicknamed epicurean and atheist by his contemporaries.
Spinoza's philosophical system developed itself on the basis of Descartes (q.v.), who, dissatisfied with both the dogma and the scepticism around him, cleared the ground by first doubting everything, and then laying a new foundation in Cogito, ergo sum. Spinoza, however, took his 'I think, therefore I am' merely as a starting-point to establish not (as with Descartes) an unreconciled dualism of spirit and matter, but a pure Monism, of which the sole foundation is Substance—'that which is in itself and is conceived through itself;' with an infinite number of Attributes, of which thought and extension, or spirit and matter, are alone dealt with. Spinoza's one Substance, causa sui, he expressly calls God; yet this term is not to be understood in the ordinary sense, for Spinoza's God neither thinks nor creates. There is no real difference, he holds, between mind, as represented by God, and matter, as represented by Nature; they are One, and, according to the light under which they are viewed, may be called either God or Nature. The visible world is not distinct from him. It is only his visible manifestation, flowing out of him, who is the first fountain of life and essence, as a finite from the infinite, variety from unity—a unity, moreover, in which all varieties merge again. Extension and thought, which with Descartes had been two Substances, with Spinoza become Attributes—that which the mind perceives as constituting Substance. Extension is visible Thought; Thought is invisible Extension. And this explains the relation between body and mind, and the perfect harmony between them. The mind is the idea of the body—i.e. the same thing considered under the attribute of thought. Substance as thought falls into an infinite number of Ideas, and as extension into an infinite number of Bodies. These Spinoza calls Modes. The modus or accidens is only the varying form of Substance. Like the curling waves of the ocean, the modes have no independent existence; they are simply the ever-varying shapes of the Substance. Substance thus is the only really existing, all-embracing essence, to which belongs every thing perceptible to our senses, and every thing not perceptible. Thus, every thought, wish, or feeling is a Mode of God's Attribute of thought; every thing visible is a Mode of God's Attribute of extension. God is the 'immanent idea,' the One and All, the natura naturans; World, natura naturata, is one complex whole and one peculiar aspect of God's infinite Attribute of extension. The variety we behold in things is a mere product of our faulty conceptions, particularly of what Spinoza terms our 'imagination,' which perceives unity as a complex of multiplicity. The connection of things is the same as the connection of ideas; we attain the truth only when, looking away from the multiplicity of ideas and of things, we behold God sub specie æternitatis.
His system is mainly contained in his Ethica, which is not a treatise of Ethics, but a complete philosophy. The Ethica he deduces in a mathematical form, after the method of Euclid, but with a stringency much more apparent than real. Chief doctrines are: The absence of free-will in man—himself only a Modus dependent on causes without, and not within him. Will and Liberty belong only to God, who is not limited by any other Substance. Good and Evil are relative notions, and sin is a mere negative; for nothing can be done against God's will, and there is no idea of Evil in him. Utility alone, in its highest sense, must determine the good and the evil in our mind. Good, or useful, is that which leads us to greater reality, which preserves and exalts our existence. Our real existence is knowledge. Highest knowledge is the knowledge of God. From this arises the highest delight of the spirit. Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; and this is to be attained by a diligent following in God's ways. Sin, evil, negation, &c. are merely things that retard and obstruct this supreme happiness. Spinoza's Pantheism was long regarded as 'the most iniquitous and blasphemous human invention,' and had few followers even in Holland. But in the 18th century it attracted the admiration of men such as Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, and became with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel the acknowledged basis of much of modern German philosophy; and pious theologians like Schleiermacher did not hesitate to apply to Spinoza the epithet of 'pious, virtuous, God-intoxicated.'
Spinoza's principal works are Renati Descartes Principia Philosophiæ More Geometrico Demonstrata (Amsterdam, 1663); Tractatus Theologico-politicus (anonymous, 1670); and, published as Opera Posthuma, in the year of Spinoza's death by Ludwig Meyer: Ethica
Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (written in its essentials in 1662-65), Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Eruditione, Epistolæ, Compendium Grammaticæ Linguæ Hebrææ. Several minor treatises are lost; but the Tractatus de Deo et Homine, published in 1862, is a most valuable addition to our materials for tracing the development of Spinoza's system. The Tractatus Theologico-politicus contains an acute and rationalistic view of revelation, and in his biblical criticism Spinoza shows much more directly the influence of Maimonides than in his ethics. In his politics he has many points common with Hobbes. The literature on the Spinozistic philosophy is very copious, especially in Germany; Spinoza's life has even been made by Auerbach the subject of a romance. There are editions of Spinoza's works by Paulus (1803), Bruder (1846), and especially Van Vloten and Land (2 vols. 1882-83). There are translations of Spinoza's chief works by Elwes (1884), and of the Ethica by W. H. White (1883), as also by H. Smith (with an essay, Spinoza and his Environment, Cincinnati, 1886). There are English monographs on Spinoza by Sir F. Pollock (1880), Dr Martineau (1882), and Principal Caird (1888); works in German by Sigwart (1839), Thomas (1846), Camerer (1877), and Baltzer (1888); in French by Saintes (1842). See, besides Ueberweg and the other histories of philosophy, the bibliography by Van der Linde (Hague, 1871). A monument to Spinoza was erected at the Hague in 1880.