Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/414

 400 CRITICAL NOTICES : physics for its own sake, while he was passionately interested in moral and political problems '. There are two obvious remarks to be made on this. First, Mr. Duff himself has found it necessary to devote about one-third of his book to the metaphysical and psychological part of the system. Next, he seems to have reached his conclusion by leaving out of sight most of the previous history of moral and political speculation, and the attitude of most philo- sophers towards practice and the problems of conduct. Spinoza certainly did aim at making his philosophy furnish a guide to the conduct of life. One is tempted to ask what philosopher has not done so, and what metaphysician ever did give proof, according to Mr. Duff s test, of interest in metaphysics for its own sake. For my own part I should be well pleased if philosophers were bolder in asserting that pure speculation has as much right to exist as any other human faculty, and finds in its normal exercise its own sufficient justification and reward. But such is not the common usage. What did Descartes put forth as the object of his quest ? 'Marcher a vec assurance en cette vie '. Leibniz appears to have recoiled from Spinoza for thoroughly practical reasons. In Hume, perhaps, if anywhere, we may find ' metaphysics for its own sake ' ; and yet the precursor of the critical philosophy was also the de- stroyer, not without political motives, of the Social Contract. What, again, of Kant and his Practical Season, and all the various forms of Naturrecht, or the contradiction thereof, produced by all the moderns? Was Schopenhauer more a metaphysician than Spinoza, and if so, why? Metaphysics are subordinate enough with Nietzsche, no doubt. But if Mr. Duff's dialectic is to land us in a classification of philosophies that sets off Spinoza and Nietzsche by themselves contra inunduin, I cannot help thinking there is something wrong with the premisses. Like one or two other acute commentators, Mr. Duff seems to think that Spinoza's sys- tem can be explained as it were in a vacuum, as a unique and unhistorical phenomenon ; though he must needs admit (Spinoza himself having done so) that there was such a person as Thomas Hobbes. Mr. Duff, by the way, has not noticed that the reserva- tion of a certain amount of ' natural right ' by the individual is quite as clearly laid down by Hobbes as by Spinoza, though not to the same extent ; but that is a minor point. Well, it is not for me to avenge history. Now the worst of the puzzle is to come. Mr. Duff undertakes to prove his thesis ; he must believe that he has at least made it plausible ; but I am wholly unable to appreciate his proof. I can- not find it anywhere ; I cannot even find what Mr. Duff supposes it to be, beyond the existence of the Tractatus Politicus. There is plenty of good writing, plenty of knowledge in detail ; but nothing, to my mind, at all tending to prove that Spinoza regarded the Tractatus Politicus as the real master-work for which the Ethics was merely preparation. I am sorry for my obtuseness, and can only confess it, and wish that Mr. Duff had given us an analytical