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BARUCH SPINOZA.

SPINOZA, BARUCH, a famous Dutch philosopher, of Jewish parentage; born at Amsterdam, November 24, 1632; died at The Hague, February 21, 1677. He Latinized his name of Baruch into BENEDICTUS, by which he is usually designated. He received a careful Rabbinical training; but at an early age he began to hold heterodox opinions, and was repeatedly summoned before a Rabbinical Council. As he failed to appear, the anathema maranatha was pronounced against him in 1656. At the urgency of the Rabbis he was banished from Amsterdam, and finally took up his residence at The Hague, where he devoted himself to speculative philosophy. In 1673 he was offered a professorship in the University of Marburg, which he declined. During his lifetime Spinoza put forth several profound treatises, but he withheld several of his most notable works, which were not published until after his death. Among these are the "Ethica," the "Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione," the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus." The First Book of his "Ethica" contains a series of "Definitions" and "Axioms," which may be regarded as the basis of his philosophical system.

SUPERSTITION AND FEAR.

MEN would never be superstitious if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune; but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swerved this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery; though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though few, I believe, know their own nature: no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in pros

VOL. XIX.-1

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while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the State is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.

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The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact that it comes to all men naturally, — though some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of credulity. For as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty which has not yet proved illusive.

This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for as Curtius well says (Lib. iv., chap. 10), "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them. as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious. reverence by the whole people; a system which has been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas that they leave no room for sound reason, - not even enough to

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But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear which keeps them down with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free State no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's

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