One night grey bars appeared in the western sky, but
they had too often deluded us, and we did not believe
in them. On this particular evening they were
a little heavier, and the window-cords were damp.
The air which came across the cliff was cool, and
if we had dared to hope we should have said it had
a scent of the sea in it. At four o’clock
in the morning there was a noise of something beating
against the panes— they were streaming!
It was impossible to lie still, and I rose and went
out of doors. No creature was stirring, there
was no sound save that of the rain, but a busier time
there had not been for many a long month. Thousands
of millions of blades of grass and corn were eagerly
drinking. For sixteen hours the downpour continued,
and when it was dusk I again went out. The watercourses
by the side of the roads had a little water in them,
but not a drop had reached those at the edge of the
fields, so thirsty was the earth. The drought,
thank God, was at an end!
SPINOZA
Now that twenty years have passed since I began the
study of Spinoza it is good to find that he still
holds his ground. Much in him remains obscure,
but there is enough which is sufficiently clear to
give a direction to thought and to modify action.
To the professional metaphysician Spinoza’s
work is already surpassed, and is absorbed in subsequent
systems. We are told to read him once because
he is historically interesting, and then we are supposed
to have done with him. But if “Spinozism,”
as it is called, is but a stage of development there
is something in Spinoza which can be superseded as
little as the Imitation of Christ or the Pilgrim’s
Progress, and it is this which continues to draw men
to him. Goethe never cared for set philosophical
systems. Very early in life he thought he had
found out that they were useless pieces of construction,
but to the end of his days he clung to Spinoza, and
Philina, of all persons in the world, repeats one of
the finest sayings in the Ethic. So far as the
metaphysicians are carpenters, and there is much carpentering
in most of them, Goethe was right, and the larger
part of their industry endures wind and weather but
for a short time. Spinoza’s object was
not to make a scheme of the universe. He felt
that the things on which men usually set their hearts
give no permanent satisfaction, and he cast about for
some means by which to secure “a joy continuous
and supreme to all eternity.” I propose
now, without attempting to connect or contrast Spinoza
with Descartes or the Germans, to name some of those
thoughts in his books by which he conceived he had
attained his end.
Copyrights
Pages from a Journal with Other Papers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
