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SPI Opera Posthuma." Of these posthumous works the first was the famous "Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata"—the most notable of all his writings, written originally in Dutch, and afterwards prepared for the press by himself in Latin. It is in five parts, and the first, "De Deo," contains the essence of Spinozism. The other parts are entitled "De Natura et Origine Mentis;" "De Origine et Natura Affectuum;" "De Servitute Humana, seu de affectuum viribus;" "De Potentia Intellectus, seu de libertate humana." In the "Ethics" he presents in a distinct form the idea on which he had pondered during all the active years of his intellectual life. Setting out from a few definitions and axioms, he professed to resolve, in mathematical form, all the high questions of philosophy, descending gradually from the heights of Absolute Being, and reproducing demonstratively the order and relation of events in the orderly development of their a priori conceptions. The mathematical method of Spinoza is an essential part of his system, and before writing his "Ethica" he had laid the foundation in a logical treatise on method, which appears (in an unfinished state) in the posthumous works. This remarkable tract bears the title "De Intellectus Emendatione, et de via qua optime in veram rerum cognitionem dirigitur." It opens with a contrast between the mean and vulgar aims of ordinary spirits and that true peace which, according to Spinoza, is to be found in the contemplation of perfect truth. He tells us that human knowledge and human happiness coincide. Goodness, and the pursuit of truth by the exercise of thought, are virtually one. "Experience," he says in the opening sentence, "having taught me the vanity and emptiness of the ordinary events and aims of human life, as I saw that the objects of anxiety and alarm were in themselves neither good nor evil, but only through their relations to mind, I resolved finally to investigate whether there exists a true good, which itself alone can satisfy the entire soul—which when found and possessed may give to the soul supreme and eternal happiness." Such happiness, according to Spinoza, may be attained even in this life by the philosophical spirit, and the "De Intellectus Emendatione" is an attempt to point out the way. The third of the posthumous works (also unfinished) is the "Tractatus Politicus." If the former treatise refers to the ideal of intellectual, and in general of perfect life in the individual, Spinoza here developes his ideal of society and the state. In the first five chapters of this original but paradoxical work he treats of politics in general, and in the rest of the book, of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. His political principles are akin to those of Hobbes. He resolves natural law into natural power, and subordinates the other rules of morality to the universal desire of self-preservation. This benevolent recluse seems to assert that good faith is to be kept only so long as it is useful, and that neither magistrates nor citizens in their natural s tate, and before society is organized, can do wrong. The "Correspondence" of Spinoza occupies a considerable space in the posthumous works. Oldenburg, De Vries, Leibnitz, Louis Meyer, and De Blyenbergh are among the more distinguished or copious of his correspondents. Above seventy letters, chiefly on philosophical matters, by Spinoza, or addressed to him, are contained among these "Epistolæ." A Compendium of Hebrew grammar is the only remaining treatise in the "Opera Posthuma," and it is comparatively of little interest.

We can afford only a few sentences to the Philosophy which Spinoza has reasoned out in the works published during his lifetime and after his death. It is essentially a theory of God, and man, and human society—an a priori system of metaphysics, and an a posteriori and utilitarian system of politics and practical morals. This Amsterdam Jew had abandoned judaism with its traditions. He sought for, and thought he had found the idea of God, which those traditions had spoiled, in that Reason which is happiness, and which, in revealing God, supplies the Infinite and Eternal as the supreme object of human affections. The obstruction to a perfect life and to happiness is taken away—so Spinoza feels—only when the soul, rising above the changing and uncertain objects of sense, is united in love with the Infinite and Eternal. But love is dependent on knowledge. He must therefore know God—develop the idea of the perfect Being—that idea which Descartes taught him to find in the very roots of his own being. The question from which his whole philosophy starts is—What is God? This is the question of the first book of the "Ethics." Spinozism is essentially a system of theology, which, like Calvinism, rises from the nature of God and descends to this world of ours with its events and issues. Indeed, many analogies may be discovered between the theories of Spinoza and those of Jonathan Edwards. God with Spinoza is the Being or substance—in a word the Unconditioned. His system is professedly the development of the idea of Being or substance—of the Unconditioned—of God. He sets out from a few definitions and axioms. A "substance" is that, the conception of which does not need the conception of anything else as antecedent to it, or on which it is dependent. An "attribute" of a substance is whatever the mind perceives to constitute its essence. The "mode" of a substance is an accident or phenomenon, by means of which it is conceived. From these and other definitions, along with seven axioms, it appears that existence is of the essence of substance, that one substance cannot be produced by another, that substance is necessarily infinite, that there can only be one substance, and that this one substance is God. "Præter Deum nulla dari neque concipi potest Substantia," is one of the conclusions which Spinoza demonstrates from his premises. But this substance has attributes, and these attributes have modes. Each of its attributes expresses, in its own way, the essence of substance, and as this essence is infinite each attribute must be infinite. Extension and thought are attributes of substance, and as such are infinite. We attribute to God extension, and we attribute to God thought. He is thus absolute extension and absolute thought. But God is essentially extension and thought in the absolute, and not in their finite modes or manifestations. As such, the One Substance is extension, but incorporeal; thought, but not conscious intelligence and will. The perfect Being becomes body and consciousness in those various finite modes which are implied in the infinite attributes, and which necessarily belong to them. Extension receives expression in the finite figures and motions which constitute the material world; thought receives expression in the finite ideas and volitions of consciousness. The "modes" of the "attributes" of the "substance" are thus the material world and men. These constitute nature, and form a necessary part of God the substance, who alone can be conceived as absolutely independent, existing by the necessity of his own nature alone, and determined to action by himself alone. God alone is a free cause, for he only exists from the very necessity of his nature, and acts from the necessity of his nature alone. There is absolutely nothing in common between the divine and the human intellect and personality. "I know not what the Divine personality means, says Spinoza, but I believe that in the Divine vision promised to the faithful, God will reveal even this to his own." God is the immanent but not the transient cause of nature and of all that it contains. He causes material things, and conscious persons, as modes of his own infinite attributes, but not as independent substances. The material world and each conscious being are one in God, in whom also the human soul and the human body are identified. In nature there is no absolute contingency. All events, conscious and unconscious, are determined in a certain way by divine necessity. They belong to the Natura Naturata, i.e., that which necessarily follows from the divine nature, as distinguished from the Natura Naturans, i.e., the only free cause and substance of all modes or phenomena—conscious and unconscious—past, present, and to come. All volition and intellect, in attribute, and in order or mode, whether infinite or finite, belong to the former and not to the latter. The Natura Naturata is thus essentially and throughout necessitated. Those modes or events which constitute the universe could have been manifested in no other way than they have been, and in no other order. The opposite view derogates from the divine perfection, as does every thing which limits the One Cause by our ideas of goodness and order, and by those ends which seem desirable to us. We must not thus determine the one Supreme Nature by the nature and necessities of man. That nature and these necessities must be regulated by the One Cause into which every human person and the whole universe is at last resolved—the one Perfect Being.

This indication of the problem of Spinoza, and of the early stages of his course on the way to solve it, is all that can here be given. A slight synopsis of this sort is no substitute for the patient study of this singular body of philosophical doctrine, at the philosopher's own point of view. No adequate estimate of its merits and defects, as an attempt to solve the intellectual mystery of human life, can be offered in this place. We may be apt to think that he has embarrassed himself, for any practical or human solution of that problem, by beginning at the wrong end—among abstractions and abstract definitions, instead of among the facts of experience, and especially our experience of