Spinoza contra Kant and the Cause of Esprital Truth

By Constantin Brunner

Originally published in German in 1909 as an introduction to Spinoza und sein Kreis : historisch-kritische Studien über holländische Freigeister / Koenraad Oege Meinsma.

Published in French as Spinoza contre Kant et la cause de la vérité spirituelle. Translated and with and introduction by Henri Lurié. - Paris : J. Vrin, 1932.

This English translation is based on an unpublished version translated by Henri Lurié. It has been edited and modified by Barrett Pashak. 2007.

Are you narrow-minded, upset by a new word?Will you only hear that which you've already heard?—J.W. Goethe, Spinozist and non-Kantian.

Other than Kant, none among those innovative men whom one calls philosophers possesses the compelling force of Spinoza, whose majesty is such that it is not without a certain 'popularity.'

Spinoza and Kant—Spinoza or Kant!

There lies in this opposition... however, what is to come now is central to the most serious of matters, and is itself deeply serious, and is not for unthinking people, who close their ears as soon as they hear anything revolutionary and frankly queer sounding compared to that to which they are accustomed, especially when it concerns Immanuel Kant; since they automatically, without knowing how, stand on their guard proclaiming: "We, all, are Kantians!" So goes the first verse of the battlesong of the scholars: one after the other they trot behind their Immanuel Kant like lambs behind their mama; against us, however, the meekest of these lambs acts like a tiger cub, straining to roar and act all bloodthirsty.

For we say: Spinoza and Kant. And we say: Spinoza or Kant! And we find it more agreeable if, when we say this, the Kant-people, in their fancy, seize us, break us and annihilate us, than if they were to do the opposite, and pamper and flatter us.

Spinoza and Kant—from one and from the other emanates respectively the best and the worst of thought. In Spinoza's system the apparently numerous ideas find their conclusion in the steadfast awareness of the One, wherefrom each idea emerges renewed in brilliance

and force, manifesting its solidarity with all the others, together with its own thriving existence, in the One—in all these ideas lives bright the One idea, as it is said that on all the stones and pebbles of Mount Sinai a burning bush is reproduced. With all our thinking we find ourselves enhanced through Spinoza's systematic ideology, which, like a lively fountain, pervades heart and beingness, bringing purification and edification and filling us with the pure joy of the Eternal.

On the other hand, Kant, with his metaphysics, splits the one and only reality into many more disconnected thoughts than are to be found in the average mind, and never goes beyond the crude data of sensory perceptions. And what could he bring us to modify our steadfast mind—he, who is so uncertain and superstitious at the bottom of his heart? Immanuel Kant, the great scholastic—greater than Duns Scotus, doctor subtilis; greater than Thomas Aquinas, doctor angelicus; greater than Albertus, surnamed the Great—Immanuel the Greatest, scholasticissimus, doctor inexplicabilis, whom no one of his diligent followers has yet been able to explore, and to tell us if we should consider him as a skeptic, or as one who shares the superstition of the masses.

But there finally came a merry fellow, my alter-ego, who found out and faithfully reported (in a work which will be often quoted below) that he, doctor sibi repugnans, belongs to both, to the skeptic and to the superstitious. As far as his superstition is concerned, it stands midway between the dying religion—to which his heart seems mainly dedicated—and the post-religious new superstition of evolutionism, that young successor, grown strong in our midst and about ready to take over the leadership, without waiting until the old be dead and gone.

In Kant we have the condensed, palpable moulting of the dominant popular mentality, ie. of superstition; for, once more in human history, superstition is undergoing a transformation: this time, from religion to that hundred times, thousand times greater folly of evolutionism. Of course, people are completely unaware of the fact that evolution requires just as much faith and credulity on their part as formerly did religion, and that they have simply found therein some new superstitions. Those who find themselves liberated from the old superstitions believe themselves now to have freed themselves from all superstition, since in their ignorance of the true nature of superstition, they think that it may be overcome, and so go on arguing about it in purely negative terms, there being now nothing left to believe in....

Since the idea that life and death are one and the same ( in Nature everything being equally positive, as positive as is in general our relative nature itself)—since they are incapable of grasping that true idea, they eventually conclude, that after one passes away, there is nothing left and everything comes to an end. Unaware of the fact that they fall constantly from one enslaving superstition into another, they would rather make us believe that with each new one they have now found Truth and Freedom.

In these times of transition between the forms of superstition, many people experience the same fate as my friend the modern-minded, who during his whole life—top secret information—received and still receives whippings: in his youth from his parents and

teachers, as was then fashionable; and today from his children, after the now prevailing fashion.

In the case of Immanuel Kant, what can we observe of the metamorphosis of superstition from religion to evolutionism? What function, in the midst of these two superstitions, does skepticism serve? And how did this supreme mixologist of religion, evolutionism and skepticism grow to become the famous Immanuel Kant, whom people find so praiseworthy and whom we find so dreadful? Of all this one may find elsewhere the most complete and pertinent analysis. Here, it will suffice to state the fact that everybody is praising Kant who—bend or break—encompasses in his conscience and expresses in philosophical terms everything which they, in a less profound way, also comprehend; and naturally, everything else which simpler people think and believe in. Isn't that a fact? Aren't most of the people around us little Kants, disposing at their fingertips of religion, skepticism and of evolutionism; and making out of these three ingredients a convenient seasoning for their ever-changing opinions? It is their own sagacity which they are rediscovering or, at least, could very judiciously rediscover through Kant: for he is the most sagacious; and for him, effectively, the three have become one. Even those in whom these elements are more separated can appeal to Kant, as he seems to reinforce anyone, whatever may be his opinion: a religious believer, a religious skeptic, or a skeptical evolutionist.

We have just defined the three basic types of our present transitional period: the believers in religion, those who combine religion with skepticism, and those who combine skepticism with a belief in evolutionism. We still disregard for the moment those who already espouse faithfully the doctrine of evolutionism, although they deserve most of our attention since their kind will be the leaders in the days to come. For the time being, however, they are still a minority, and we will be concerned here only with the class of the most distinguished and advanced people in our present era of transition. This is the category of those who combine skepticism with a belief in evolution. Indeed, before the new belief acquires its hermetical orthodoxy and "free thinking" drops again below zero, as it had in the past hermetic era of religion, up to that time—despite the already decided victory of the new superstition—skepticism will remain on its side. People still have their skeptical attitude, which had helped to fight against the previously dominant superstition of religion, the fire of which is extinguished, but the hearth is still warm. It is clear that it cannot happen without the middling of skepticism: from one summit of superstition to the next, one passes necessarily over the abyss of skepticism.

We stand now—it is fair to judge an era after its most advanced spirits, who represent it best and reflect its true character—we stand presently, I say, under the conjunction of skepticism and evolutionism, of that wretched evolutionism and that just as wretched skeptical attitude. You must know: skepticism is an excellent servant and helper against superstition, but it should not become your master in lieu of Truth; by itself, indeed, skepticism is as wretched as superstition, for both are equally oblivious of Truth. No doubt about, skepticism has done a good job against religious superstition, and could help us against the new superstition! But the deep confusion of our times lies precisely in the

fact that we perceive the conjunction of skepticism and evolutionism, without any awareness that in reality they stand opposed to each other.

Being what it should be, a skeptical criticism is indeed opposition against any dogmatism (and there is no other dogmatism than that of superstition, since free-thinking acknowledges no dogma)—whereas among us skepticism does not behave as it should, as a servant, but as an intolerant master. Among us governs a skepticism sovereign unto itself, which is sophistry, the sophistry of spiritlessness. One should pay due attention to the fact that nowadays skepticism reacts differently to evolutionism than it had reacted in the past to religion, whose enemy and destroyer it has been.

Today it's different, for our skepticism does not antagonize the romance of evolutionism at all; but, without hindering the progressive consolidation of that new superstition, it thrives beside it as a skepticism per-se, thus as a sophistry which subverts its own essence and raises itself against Spirit and Truth! "Who is not for me, is against me," would Truth also say to the skeptic who pretends to remain nothing but a skeptic with his evasive, "I have no comment;" and would never commit himself in any direction nor to any opinion—but such an absolutely neutral and impartial doubter is quite unlikely. One should rather take for granted that such a position is impossible, and that, because no human being subscribes to intellectual anarchy, all are inexorably committed either to Truth or to Superstition. And as far as our modern skepticism is concerned, who could deny that, instead of being simply neutral toward Truth, it is overtly in contention with Truth, and in open alliance with the new superstition of evolutionism?

"All the advanced spirits of our times" find themselves, as I said, not with some advocating skepticism, and the others evolutionism—absolutely not: they find themselves unanimously devoted, with an apathetic unscrupulousness, to the one and to the other opposite, to that dreadful mixture of skepticism and evolutionism; skepticism is their master and the superstition of evolutionism is also their master and, hence, they are serving two masters at once.

Such is the stand of all our advanced spirits, as those who happen to read these pages could immediately ascertain for themselves and give me thumbs up: “Yes, that's how it looks in my heart, where skepticism and the belief in evolutionism coalesce, and I am one of those human beings deprived of enthusiasm and of peace of mind!" Such is the stand of our advanced spirits, and the stand of those lagging behind is not much better. Only very few people are distressed and dissatisfied in their hearts and feel (a wonderful feeling coming from the depth of their beingness!) that they could be happier, that they have the obligation to be happier! But although intrinsically alien to the icy skepticism and to the superstition of their environment, none of them is able to reach out for the Truth and for the certainty of joyful awareness; their case resembles someone who knows that his parents are not the people who during his childhood had usurped that function, but does not succeed in finding his real parents and his true home.

Such people will do well to inquire if the peace of mind they seek is to be found in Spinoza's writings. On their behalf, for the sake of their elucidation and edification, I have written extensively about the two kinds of human beings: the truly thinking, with their Truth; and the others, to whom Truth remains forever invisible and who, instead, believe in its phantom—the Espritals and the Folk1; as to the last named, one would be completely mistaken to take the word 'Folk' with its commonplace meaning, for I do not suffer from such commonplace ailments and do not recognize any other fundamental difference between human beings, except their unique specific distinction into Espritals and Folk. This is an antagonism unlike all the other antagonisms encountered among humans. All the other antagonisms are those of culture and of prejudice, erected by the individuals themselves; that's why their softening and reconciliation is always possible and happens effectively in the course of history.

But the antagonism between the Espritals and the Folk is an antagonism of souls, of natures, which must always remain what it is, and all attempts to put an end to it and all efforts to make partake the Folk of Esprital awareness were and will remain folly. I call Folk all those individuals whose thinking is not of the Esprital kind, as apparent already from the opposition in the title of my work, The Doctrine of the Espritals and the Folk. I call therefore Folk all those who do not think like the Espritals, like those who are productive and/or receptive, either in the scientific methods of philosophy, or in the sublime arts, or in mystical love (where, of course, the distinction between production and receptivity becomes meaningless, since here thinking remains entirely in its depth): to think in one of these three forms, that's what I call Espritality. All those whose thinking is not Esprital I count among the Folk, however important be their scientific formation and however amazing their intelligence. For intelligence and Espritality are two very different things, so that an intelligent individual may be as devoid of spirit i.e., of Esprital awareness, as the silliest of idiots; and, that one may be, like Immanuel Kant, most intelligent and, nevertheless, completely devoid of Esprital awareness, of spirit, meaning, most intelligent and astute in the details, but in deep contradiction with regard to the conflicts among these details, as I have demonstrated and shown to be the case with Kant, and as it cannot be otherwise from the standpoint of spiritlessness. Should I be more explicit about what I mean by spiritless?—Well, it is (in opposition to Espritality in its three forms) a thinking incapable of detaching itself from the relativity and negativity of the finite, or to use Plato's image, "from the ooze of matter," so as to arrive at the firmness of that Esprital awareness of the absolute or eternal; and, instead, hypostatizes the relative to a fictitious absolute.

One cannot be more explicit here about the nature of the Folk's superstitious thinking which, in all respects, is the antithesis of Espritality, and constitutes its inversion. In paying due attention to the material content of human thinking, we must recognize the existence of two energizing principles, fundamentally different and exclusive one of the other, whereof each permeates all the particular thoughts of the individual who finds himself under its domination (that's why no progressive instruction could produce here any change, since there is nothing which could transform one of the principles into its

opposite);— The inner lives of those who are of the Spirit and of those who are of the Folk are directed by two distinct principles of thinking.

We are constantly facing human beings who belong to two different kinds of inwardness and whose thoughts are materially as far apart as positive reality is apart from nothingness. Their specific difference and their antagonism have stirred my attention to such a degree, that the Doctrine of the Espritals and the Folk had to come forth. And instead of saying Espritals and the Folk, I could also say—and in so doing our byword "Spinoza or Kant" would be placed at the very focus of its meaning and its importance—it would be exactly the same if instead of Espritals and Folk, I would say: Spinozists and Kantians!

Even though they do not at all call themselves that way and an overwhelming majority completely ignores Spinoza or Kant, one could nevertheless call them Spinozists and Kantians; all people are either Spinozists or Kantians.

For Spinoza and Kant are not simply of those particular individuals on account of whom it doesn't greatly matter how they have thought and spoken and what discipleship they have had, different from the discipleship of others. This is not the way to look at Spinoza and Kant. One has to view them rather as the two real representatives and protagonists of the two human types that we postulate: for these two kinds of people never agree in their ways of thinking nor in their outlook on life, without any possible transition from one to the other kind. Spiritlessness could never come to spirit; and Esprital thought could not energize a spiritless life, any more than a bell can ring in a vacuum.

What a different inner life these two human types have, meaning: how different their respective feeling, knowing and willing; and, transcending their relative conscience, how they experience the ultimate awareness of the absolute. This is made plain by the two individual paradigms, wherein both types of thinking have reached their highest levels, in Spinoza and in Kant.

In grasping through them the overt antagonism between the two motivating principles, in its clearest and loudest expression and with the highest intensity of contrast, we come to understand how their antagonism effectively permeates and dominates mankind as a whole, and we see clearly the hidden twosome of motivations, generally appearing as some blind natural drive, which splits humanity into two species.

No doubt, the truth of that difference and the antagonism between the two types of men will be flatly rejected by one of these types, by all the individuals of the Folk; for, lacking all Espritality, and without any connection to it, they are completely incapable of grasping its meaning. For whatever could there be, after all, that lies outside the cleverness of the understanding? Instead, they constantly and incorrigibly mistake their understanding for freethinking and Espritality. However, they do not remain within the quantum of the practical understanding, but rather they end up in the realm of

Superstition, where all their thoughts find their effective justification. But all this must sound to each of them as the most stupid and foolish contention. It is therefore self-evident that those of the Folk will flatly reject our truth of the division of men into two soul-races, whereof indeed nothing is visible to the exterior eyes. But should an individual of the Esprital type also reject it, unaware of the mental difference and of the difference of people resulting therefrom, and of the constant feud going on between them, of that war without armies, the most gigantic, implacable and the most momentous war in human history (which until now has been fought on both sides as a merciless war of subjugation, but could not have been ended with such a result)—he who is still unaware of it and ignores the facts, is very far from having adequate ideas about our species, or maybe has prematurely given up his inquiry. Two types of thinking, that's all: a third, a fourth, a fifth etc., type of thinking could only be assumed by some very naive and ignorant people; but that the thinking of all mankind be of one and the same type, this is assumed only by some very naive, uneducated persons, in contradiction to all facts provided by nature and by historical reality.

And, as among all men one could be certainly found to be the strongest in physical fitness, such is also no doubt the case for strength of mind. Thus we have the two kinds of thought which can occupy the human mind: on the one side, the thought of Truth, wherein real beingness is the only object of our thinking, which thought is strictly speaking the only one really thinkable; on the other side, that other thought (since we must use here the same word for designating a thought which has been cheated of its own content) wherein its own opposite is kept in mind, turned topsy-turvy as the mind's folly or superstition.

One man exists and must be identified, and I have very good reason to say, as I do, that Spinoza is that man, solely and uniquely, who has thought most clearly and perfectly in the way Espritals think, and who has unfailingly thought the whole Truth, always the same and in harmony with itself.

Then again, there must be also another man who is accordingly related to superstitious thinking or to the mind's folly, and I have a serious suspicion, a good reason and certainty enough to assume that in this, in the mind's folly, nobody has been as articulate as Immanuel Kant, who precisely for that reason is the greatest of all minds among those whom I call the Folk. Which means simply: he has thought on all subjects exactly as does the common man ( I have provided an irrefutable proof for that statement) and therefore has been the most intelligent of them all, a scholastic who has mastered the whole content of common thought, of common results, of common prejudice and superstition in the most sophisticated form and in the most intelligent way. But we know that cleverness is not Espritality—Oh, his amazing soulless sophistication!

From all that is said and shown here about Kant and Spinoza, we simply perceive it as a fundamental necessity—requiring a certain time for its realization in history, and which will require still more time— indeed as an unparalleled intellectual necessity, that

Spinoza become more and more the leader of the Espritals, and that Kant become more and more the leader of the Folk.

The separation started immediately after the first impact of both; and, so to speak, both were born on the same day. In fact, Spinoza had come one full century earlier, but what reputation had in his lifetime the great Saint, who accomplished his most amazing miracles only after his death, after having remained longtime rejected like a "dead dog?" A few had known him, but it did not count for much, and could hardly be taken into account, even as exception: what during his lifetime the friends "understood" was bad enough, but much worse was what some learned birds of prey, Leibniz the most famous of them, had concocted out of some of his ideas, into inventions of their own original philosophy2; and all those tirades of theologians and diabologians against the atrocious atheist have to be mentioned only insofar as they are the chief culprits for Spinoza's century-long suppression.

It would seem, indeed, as if until one hundred years after his death nobody had been taken in by his fire. But afterwards! Afterwards—at the same time that with Kant the Folk's way of thinking had gained momentum and the blow against the Idea was dealt, the counter-blow immediately followed. Miraculously awakening from the night of oblivion, Spinoza rose in no time, out of nothingness, into a gigantic shape—irradiated by the halo of Truth and of Sanctity, a figure as had not excited the imagination of men for many centuries; and the password resounded: Spinoza or Kant.***One saw then within a narrow circle what, since then, has appeared progressively everywhere, in all parts of the world: the quibblers and jingle-rhymers (this is a prick on Schiller!), the sly and witty, the narrow-shrewish, the great professors of teapots-and-philosophy, who brood nests since they do not have eggs to sit on, all these were following Kant; whereas there took side at once with Spinoza the really great and free spirits, our Goethe at their head, who calls Spinoza the Saint and christisissimum and theissimum and calls himself a fervent disciple; he "feels himself" very close to the master "although Spinoza's spirit be much deeper and purer than his own."

We will analyze at another occasion how far the thinker and how far the poet Goethe was stirred by his enthusiasm for Spinoza; of course he was also the poet who, since, has been called the Spinoza of poetry. In fact, without the spirit of Spinozist thinking no poet nor artist is really conceivable, and, how important could Spinoza become to each of them! "Indeed, I do not understand how one could be a poet," writes Friedrich Schlegel in his speech on mythology, "without admiring and loving Spinoza, and becoming his follower. In the invention of particular subjects your own imagination is rich enough; and to stimulate, to excite it to activity and to provide it with nourishment nothing is more appropriate than the poetry of other artists. In Spinoza, however, you find the beginning and the end of all imagination, the general ground and basis on which your own thinking reposes and that very separation of the primordial, of the eternal awareness, from all individual and particular objects, should be very welcome to you. Seize the occasion and

take a look! You are granted a penetrating glance into the innermost workshop of poetry. And as is his imagination, so his also Spinoza's affectivity. No sensitiveness for this or that, no passion which rises and falls; but a limpid fragrance hovers invisible-visible over the whole: everywhere the eternal longing finds a reminiscence soaring from the depth of the simple opus, which in its quiet grandeur breathes the eternal spirit of primordial love."3

I say that all free and active spirits paid homage to Spinoza as to their sovereign—for he was not one of those pedantic philosophers, but the true king and savior of the Espritals, of all those who find their inner life in Philosophy, in Art and in Love. And this familiarity with Spinoza’s ideas coincided with the most important period of modern German history, with the rising and liberation of all beautiful and noble trends in the German being; the important part played by these ideas in the said events will be ignored or undervalued only by those who do not know the power of ideas and how at that period the rediscovery of Spinoza precipitated everything in utter tension and passion and was the fact and reason why all dynamic spirits joined Spinoza.

Their discovery of Spinoza became the discovery of themselves, and areas which until then were nameless, as the hidden depth which directs their life and generates ideas in their hearts, suddenly acquired a verbal expression. The limpidity and greatness of the ideas then formulated, ideas really thinkable, unconditional and applicable to the whole web of limitless thought, the grandeur of such a true thinking and the sublimity of its manifestations, were in such complete harmony with the thinker. This elation has to be understood, not as some being-above-life, for such a sublimity would be a very poor one: above life, outside life and nature is also Kantianism in its scholastic eccentricity and in its gloomy futility, and was also Kant in his life—but it was sublimity that was in Spinoza's life. The gigantic figure of that man, comparable to none but to Christ4; such that, for the first time, it obliged even common sense people to call him "the Saint" and to get some clue of what philosophy truly means—that thought exists for life’s sake and that the thinker is not some scientific investigator whose life, otherwise, would have nothing to do with the ideas of his discipline. Here rather was a man whose life perfectly agreed with the conception of reality that he taught.

Truly, all the lively, the lively men from the school of Kant, became Neospinozists! In other words, they became Spinozists. The Kantians became Spinozists—what happened? Why did the most prominent Kantians—Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, the best philosophical brains Germany has ever produced—become Spinozists? One will try in vain to find an answer to this question in our histories of philosophy, which do not even ask that legitimate and obvious question. And there is no other answer to it than this one: that it could not have been otherwise, since these truly philosophical men necessarily saw and felt how different Benedict Spinoza's stance within philosophy was from that of Kant, who—to say it in my blunt way—had nothing in common with philosophy.

For neither his critique nor his postulates, which together constitute his philosophy, have

in fact anything to do with philosophy. The whole content of his original-philosophy is that of vulgar superstition, of thoughts out of the lowest levels of awareness, since he was unable to learn anything from Spinoza, the content of whose ideas—as the truly philosophical men were obliged to see—came from his own system, of that most genuine philosophy which had shaken the foundations of superstition. It was therefore ridiculous to allegedly submit the same foundations to a new shake-up with scholastic criticism, and, far worse than ridiculous, to extol them as still valid, once the critical shock was over.

¶ Truly philosophical minds were not willing to look at things in the same way as their predecessors of the 18th century. For the great scholar of the Age of Enlightenment had done nothing else in his laboriously concocted original-philosophy than what scholastics had done all along: after having exercised their sharp criticism over the content of superstition, to pledge their unbroken faith in it. That was not philosophy. The most original oddity and fussiness in combating superstition and in embracing that same superstition is still not philosophy, for in order to merit its name, philosophy must deal with the one and only positive Truth. It makes a tremendous difference to see and to recognize Truth, or to shriek in agony "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

¶ He who does not know Immanuel Kant's writings will believe that I slander; he who knows them and calls me nevertheless a slanderer, that I cannot help. But he who does not know them as yet and, in this matter of crucial importance, is not willing to go on believing something just because a great many other people believe it, he will have to read for himself the writings of Kant, or at least—which will be much easier for him—to read what I said on that subject in my Doctrine.

¶ He will then say as I do: Everything, everything revolves for Kant around the trinity of God, Liberty, and Immortality. These three words do not at all signify for him some special meaning, for he uses them in the most familiar way of commonplace religion with its personal God who has created man after His own likeness—"So much the worse for dear God if I resemble Him!" could have said Immanuel Kant very conveniently with Frederick the Great, if he were so capable. Also, from Goethe: "The honorable professor is a person, but God is none!" If only he could have listened to this.5

¶ But he could not do it, he could not think otherwise and could not discuss nor believe something other than superstition. Such being the case and seeing that Spinoza's stance in regard to philosophy was so entirely different, this was what then gave our important men of that time a new awareness and made the Kantians among them become non-Kantians

and Spinozists. They saw and felt in what a unique relationship to philosophy stood the man Spinoza, which by itself explains their enthusiastic statements about him.

¶ As soon as they started thinking in his way, they also became well aware of the fact that Spinoza did not come with new ideas nor with a new philosophy: it was the philosophy of the human mind, it was their own unflinching conscience, unimpaired by superstition. "Human reason left alone, leads to nothing other than to Spinozism and it is impossible that it direct us elsewhere—if the world still keeps on going for a countless number of years, its universal religion will be some refined Spinozism," believed Lichtenberg; who also said that "Spinoza has thought the highest idea that ever entered a human brain."

¶ Schelling calls Spinoza "the first philosopher who found the concepts whereby all the following centuries have grasped and fixed the two extremities of our knowing mind." For Lessing and Herder philosophy and Spinozism were identical; and the same statement was also made by Hegel, the most comprehensive and systematic, as well as the most independent and firm, among the German philosophers, who did not attempt, like Leibnitz, Fichte or Schelling, to reshape again and again his original-philosophy. And Hegel also said, "either you have Spinozism or you have no philosophy!"

¶ And this is certainly the right way of speaking about Spinozism, as we also intend to speak about it, with an ever increasing emphasis, and in turning our backs on those petty philologists who, also, become occasionally solemn in their lessons on Spinoza: they are solemn at the start and at the end, but in between they exhibit an ecstatic self-confidence (due to the present-day misconceptions of that miserable philology which is incapable of any right approach to life) for being personally habilitated to reveal some important mistakes and flaws of that same Spinoza, whom great men and the greatest have so unconditionally glorified.

¶ We turn our backs on all those incompetents, and look back to the competent men, how they spoke about Spinozism, and in speaking in our turn as they did. For we could not speak in another way about the one and only system of thinking that remains free of all objections and of all contradictions. He who feels obliged to speak here differently happens to speak about something other than Spinozism, and his criticism is irrelevant and futile, serving only to confuse weaklings and ignorant people—and it must needs proceed from a confused mind. To say it dryly and bluntly: all the many objections against Spinozism, together with all the many alleged right things invented by our original metaphysicians to counter Spinoza, all this is a matter of the Folk's way of

thinking, which normally contradicts not only Spinozism, but even itself; we see how all their pretended objections and truths cancel each other and sooner or later are rejected as absurd, but Spinozism is not canceled thereby: if they contradict it because of its alleged flaws, it happens exactly in the same way as we call a solar eclipse that which in reality is an eclipse of our Earth.

¶ There is such a thing as an inability to think Spinozism, but there is no such a thing as a contradiction to a truly thought Spinozism. For Spinozism is the enunciated one and only Truth of our mind; against it there is no contradiction nor any adverse criticism, for that would have to be a "Critique of Pure Thinking," in other words of our very beingness, which critique is only possible as an illusion and a scholastic game in a mind oblivious to its true self and with its split conscience completely entered into and lost amidst the patterns of relativity, so that, blinded by all the absurdities, it tends to oppose its own absolute being.

¶ A Critique of pure thinking would be a critique of our beingness which we truly and really are, and, without which we are really and truly nothing: a critique of pure thinking would be Thought-critiquing-itself just as Baron Münchhausen pulls himself out of the morass. TheSse two mendacious stories do not fool us, despite the very tempting character of the images, suggesting a Münchhausen outside himself and also Thought existing outside itself, and thereby thinking itself and münchhausing.

¶ It will suffice to indicate here their scholastic business in "pure nothingness," in their critique of thinking, and in their critique of Spinozism, including naturally their "immanent critique" of it. Let us repeat once more: Spinozism as such will never be an object, and hence not a disputed object for a conscience where Truth instantly vanishes and is replaced by something other and opposite. It stands against that "otherness," against the degradation of absolute thought into absolutized relativity and negativity, into that immanentized, antithethic thought of the Folk (and such it remains, even if one introduces as one of its components a special scholastic term, e.g. the word "postulate"), which creates its critique against its own figments. But the Espritals, who think positively, standing above all this antithesis, are aware of the Spinozist idea; as long as they really abide by their free spirit, they have to speak about Spinozism in the way we have just heard, as of the unique and natural system of thinking.

¶ Spinoza himself spoke about it in a very significant way, in confessing that he hadn't invented any new philosophy, that he knew only that he understood the true one—and that philosophy was to him no less certain than that the three angles of a triangle equal

two right angles.

¶ Did one hear correctly this confession and did one derive from it a lesson? I doubt it, but his statement is important and stands unique among all philosophers. Also, none of the others has ever tried to avoid having his opus named after him! One should start thinking about that statement, in considering at the same time the simplicity and the naturalness in the system of the man who denied to his philosophy any originality, in contrast to the system builders with their "original-philosophies" (including also those plagiaristic botchers who pollute and poison the waters immediately at their source), with all their artifice, violence, hoisting, whims and fakes, wherefrom none of them could refrain, neither the greatest and smartest, nor the smallest and dullest. There are indeed people pretending that they have invented a new philosophy but who have not invented even gunpowder!

¶ But we do not browse around in the "danse macabre" of the original philosophers who advertise their own findings, the freaks of their knowledge, as the chief concern of philosophy, since the chief concern of philosophy has nothing to do with findings, but only with the finding-of-oneself; and not at all through knowledge but in beingness, the finding of oneself in the unity of the truly essential Being.

¶ This absolutely true philosophy stands before us in the works and sayings of Spinoza. We have here more than philosophy!—I would say so if only I knew another name for our most precious jewel and treasure, and if it were not anyhow clear to all the clear-minded who keep it as the uppermost treasure of humanity, that they cherish in it something else than the kind of philosophy of those finders and most prolific inventors.6

¶ Those finders and inventors do not know what thinking and philosophy really are, because they are not aware of the chief concern of the human mind and its thinking. Only insofar as they are preoccupied with their own originality do they enter into thinking, and wishing to be original makes them act as fools.

What would mean Spinoza to me if I did not have to recognize what remains totally hidden to the others because of their complete blindness of judgment through the sheer prejudice of common talk? For I have to recognize and to confess that in the Ethics of Spinoza, in that most perfect life-tool, the innermost conscience of man is put into an effective system, wherein philosophy i.e., the whole realm of ideas, generated out of the

unique principle of living thought, is present in all its writ.

Only in Spinoza is this so. Of this most exquisite kind of work, there is only this unique work of the unique Spinoza. He is indeed more than a philosopher, a philosophos. All, all the others are philosophoi; but he is the true sophos, since he possesses the true sophia. If then we desire a special name which has not yet been abused among us, since it has not been used as yet, sophos would be that name, whereto nobody else can pretend than alone this incomparable man.

But hereby I did not intend to make any proposal for the adoption of a new word. I have not the slightest interest in such things, although I certainly do not belittle the importance of an adequate word for designating a particular and well determined concept. On the other hand, in our language, speaking about Spinoza's sophy and about him as a sopher would be quite funny, perhaps it would be better to use "acrosophy" and "acrosopher". What I intended to show here with the utmost clarity is simply the difference between Spinoza and the philosophers. The ideas of the latter in comparison to the whole Truth offered by the former, are indeed just philosophy, which is the" love of truth," the search and the endeavor for Truth.7

The common talk pretending that others should be put on the same level is an assertion proven wrong at first sight, for not one of these others encompasses with his system even the external totality of ideas. None of them has a coherent system of thinking, since they have all worked on special subjects, or given all their attention to criticism, with a simple blueprint of a system. Hence, only Spinoza has a really encompassing and elaborate system, which, if one considers the sequence of the subjects treated, follows the classification already familiar to the Greeks: logic, physics and ethics. Except that Spinoza, the completely unscholastic thinker of true reality, ignores any logical discipline dealing with empty forms of thinking; for him logic is ontology, and physics comprehends also psychology; as for the ethics, far from being a code of morals8, it becomes through him a splendid description of the freethinker, of the perfect Esprital, such as he himself lived.

Spinoza's Ethics is a real system, it is the system of thorough thinking, whereof there can only be one system; and such as it is before us, not extensive at all, nothing is missing in it and there is not a single weak spot in that everywhere perfect construction; the great precision of his expression permitted him to give without discontinuance the whole content of thought. Of course, some will find that the man wears an iron coat. Indeed, some parts are more difficult to grasp, whereas some other parts are extremely easy, even if they are per se of a difficult nature. And the reason for such an unequal treatment? I will point to the chief circumstance contributing thereto: To one who is familiar with

Spinoza's writings it is well known to what extent he possessed the gift of clarity, as well as the rare ability to present, out of the profoundest depth of conscience, even difficult and daring ideas in a large and vivid development and make it easy to grasp them.

No thinker will ever find a lack of clarity in Spinoza; indeed, he does not belong to those writers of whom Marheineke once said that one must read their sentences three times: the first time understanding nothing at all, the second time understanding a little, and the third time still nothing. Spinoza is clear at all times. Why, then, next to the fully developed ideas, are some ideas given in a very concise form (and it is this concision that is mistaken by many readers as confusion); and precisely so in the Ethics, in his life-work? Because indeed the Ethics has been his life-work, but the work of a short life! He knew that it was to be short, and so he had to keep on writing his work, but without revealing his urgent haste, the oppressing "Terar dum prosim!" for "a free men thinks of nothing less than of death and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life" (Eth.IV./67)—in making it as clear as possible, but also as concise as possible, so that it might be available at all events and that he may die; for in this single respect he panders to death and even fears death, that it may come to pass before his mission has been accomplished.

Spinoza accomplished his mission in life quite a number of years before he died—and yet he had not finished it as long as he lived. His work was always finished and never finished. He had adopted that unique and peculiar arrangement whereby the writer was subsequently able to lengthen the concise form and go here and there into details. Without breaking the uniformity and without impairing the artful structure of his work, he was able to add by and by details to some of the essential propositions, and to enrich the exposition through various explanations, corollaries, notes, and appendices. Spinoza did so as long as he lived, as much as he was capable of; to create in still more places that precision of discourse, often of such a classical and heartful sincerity, and in adding everywhere to its intelligibility also the compulsion to understand—only by death was it cut short.

But, as already said, his work is nevertheless complete and none of the ideas of reality are missing; although some are put so briefly and then left behind, such that only very few readers indeed will catch their profound meaning, all the more so as good reading is as rare as good writing. To be sure, Spinoza's most powerful sayings are his shortest; but precisely because they are so powerful and sublime, their shortness should not matter at all: in Omnia animata quamvis diversis gradibus (whereof I have tried in the pneumatology of my doctrine to develop the profound meaning), or even more so in his proposition of the infinitis attributis ( whereof I will provide later on an explanation)—[Done in Materialism and Idealism]. What a megathos of communication created out of the bottomless energy of scientific thinking and imagination, overwhelming our minds and exalting to the skies our souls! Oh, no other man has ever spoken like Spinoza, the great and nowhere mediocre. The longer and keener one clings to him the better one sees how powerful and healthy is everything he offers, so entirely different from what is to be

found in the writings of Immanuel Kant, where one has to bite his hard piece of bread out of the mildew; Kantians, people without taste, devour all the mildew, too!

Let us confide in those among us whom the modern mania for reading hundreds and hundreds of books has not yet deprived of the marvelous and illuminating privilege of earnest reading, to know how to read a really earnest book—but where do you find nowadays people who have not lost their reading capability as a result of their mania for reading and writing?9 Where is the man who can still read today? Where is the one who can read Spinoza? This requires more than mere know-how in reading. This requires in the first place that he be an Esprital, and that he be perfectly aware of the difference between Espritality and the Folk's way of thinking. Otherwise he will fall away or remain irresolute because of the homonymy of the Esprital and the Folk's terms, since precisely for the chief concepts e.g., for the words God, Spirit, Eternity, etc., he will be constantly reminded of their usual superstitious meaning.

But there is a remedy to it in the golden rule for reading Spinoza: Keep constantly in mind for each item the definition given by Spinoza. He who reads Spinoza well obtains through him the whole of wisdom. Not an iota and not a dot are missing in his world of ideas, where all thoughts appear in the strict order and connection of the coherent system. From the very outset, this very fact makes the great difference between him and other thinkers, who always are treating only partial subjects and many of whom have never even dealt with those subject matters which give our thinking its proper scientific and philosophical foundation.

In Spinoza's coherent system all the ideas are complete, quantitatively as well as in their truth and purity, which assertion is also fully ascertained by the most rigorous inquiry based on the theory of faculty-quanta. What is the theory of faculty-quanta? Its explanation is found in my Doctrine of the Espritals and the Folk. This basic tool of classification into faculty-quanta, which has been missing up to now, and through which an unprecedented clarity and simplification takes place in our thinking, permits the most precise distinction between Esprital thinking patterns and the Folk's spiritless thoughts. Here we can speak about it only briefly and as follows:

One must distinguish three faculty-quanta of the human mind, from the angle of its content or bethoughtness (ideatum). In the faculty-quantum of our practical understanding, we think as materialists of our world of things, thinghood in motion i.e., the great variety of mutually opposing things and, among them, ourselves as a thing, moving and being moved constantly. This is then our relative thinking or our relative being. For what is thinking? One should not regard it with our leading metaphysicians as "some formal subjective performance in order to grasp the objects of reality," but disregarding that completely unscientific and mystifo-comic conception, one has to view our thinking, our mind, as the inner objectivity of our body, of our state of motion in its

relation to the other states of motion of the world.

But in order to understand it that way, one has to grasp the complete inter-operability of feeling, knowing and willing; which all three together constitute our thinking, or our life—a life which exists, as exists the whole of relative reality and wherein consists its nature, through motion and in motion. Our practical understanding i.e., our feeling-knowing-willing, or our consciousness, is our awareness of being what we are, or more exactly: of our being moved and of our moving within the motion of the universe of things.

Our consciousness of being and our being itself are truly one and the same, unum et idem. The fact that with our practical understanding we cannot comprehend anything other than thingly motion (and that solely from the perspective of our specific thingly consciousness), as well as the fact of this our faculty to grasp thingly motion in general, are proofs of the unum et idem: Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum, the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things, as writes Spinoza.

Thought concerning this relative existence of ours, which I call the practical understanding because it is the understanding of our praxis, and serves its entire range, all sciences included, in view of our life-oriented activities and our self-preservation, is included and sublimated in what I call our Esprital thinking. Here in Esprital thinking, as idealists, we grasp ourselves absolutely and in truth, in the unity which constitutes the true nature of the whole world of motion, of all the diverse and antagonistic individualities, whereof none is in harmony with another, nor even with itself (for each has parts and changes, is sometimes here, sometimes there), whereof none truly exists. In the absolute unity of true beingness this simply unthinkable, nonexistent relativity (whereto we must attribute a substratum of beingness in order to think it relatively), in the Absolute, I say, in the One which alone is truly thinkable, and where we finally acquire the proper content of our thinking, the whole of relativity finds itself positively sublimated.

And this is precisely the case of the Espritals, that they think in these two faculty-quanta, the relativity of materialism, this world of evolving things; as well as the absolute idealism of the eternal Spirit, or in other words, relativity on the basis of absolute Truth, which manifests itself to them immediately—as does relativity manifest itself to the practical understanding in our feeling-knowing-willing—and it is just this immediacy that is itself the revelation, experience, or awareness of the Spirit, whomever it really modifies (that is, it modifies his relative being) through art, philosophy, and love; that's why the testimonies of genuine and direct Esprital awareness always present themselves as productions of great simplicity, without constraint nor ruse, in contrast to all other original inventions, deprived as they are of any authentic awareness.

However, there are not merely the relative and the absolute, and nothing can be understood unless we know about the three faculty-quanta, which we can consider as World, Paradise, and Hell. There is a third faculty-quantum of the human mind, which is found in the Folk's thought in conjunction with their relative thinking. Instead of as happens in the Esprital natures, where the relative content finds itself sublimated and transposed to the Absolute in the true awareness of the Self, as the one really thinkable idea of Unity—instead of that, one finds in the Folk's minds the Relative in conjunction with the Analogon, the simulacrum, the quid pro duo, which resembles Spirit in its mental pattern, but opposes Espritality by its content and, hence, is a form of superstition which renders unthinkable any genuine understanding of relativity. Upon analysis, the Analogon is always found to be a sort of absolute materialism, whatever its name may be, and whatever it believes itself to be. All religion, all the pantheism or monism of popular philosophy is in reality materialistic.10

This is all I can say here about the three faculty-quanta of the human mind, whereof Practical Understanding, our thinking of the relative reality, i.e., the thinking of our world, of thinghood in motion, is common to all mankind: all human beings possess it more or less; all those of the Folk as well as all the Espritals. But, where the latter think their practical understanding in concomitance with their Esprital awareness, the former think their practical understanding in concomitance with the analogon or the pseudo-absolute, namely, their own relative reality hypostatized to the absolute.

In examining now Spinoza on the basis of this orientation, we will find in his personality the purest and the very finest combination of practical understanding and spirit, as typical of genuine Espritals. We find in him the entire truth of practical understanding or the materialistic theory of our cosmos with its thinghood in motion, as well as the whole truth of idealism whereupon our materialistic world picture is based, namely upon the absolute Truth of Esprital thinking—but we find nothing in him of any thoughts of superstition or of the Analogon, nothing, absolutely nothing! We do not find in him the slightest trace, neither of religion, nor of evolutionism, not of any kind of superstition, and not even of skepticism; not a trace of any of that in Spinoza, but only the unshaken trust and firmness in Truth. I do not know of anybody so great in Truth and so free of superstition and error.

Nothing would be easier than to contradict me, but I have made my statement after a thorough examination and comparison of all those who are reputed great men. If, before contradicting me, one investigates as I did, it is most probable that one will come to the same conclusion, and find in Spinoza the true meaning of Truth and Thinking. Go ahead and see for yourself that there is nothing of religion, nothing of evolutionism, nothing of any superstition, and nothing of skepticism in Spinoza’s thoughts. And hence also his "unice securus"!

The very essence of thinking is to be, with all precision, the clear and unique eternal Truth, without the slightest doubt about whether perhaps something else is the Truth; not as a gamble or as a dialectic of antinomies, wherein the mind becomes utterly entangled, and whereof the illusion would have to be dissipated through a 'Critique of Pure Reason."

Those who think truly will isolate the faculty-quantum of relative thinking—wherein generally and of necessity contradiction is to be found i.e., that which is not really thinkable, and wherein therefore neither the thesis nor the antithesis of those antinomies is any more thinkable, and where no truth whatsoever is to be found—and in keeping it clearly apart from the faculty-quantum of Esprital thinking, where the Truth is to be found, namely the One-and-Unique, truly thinkable and necessary—they will come to that Truth which is the whole Truth. Half-truth, which invites skepticism, and even superstition, do not exist for those who think truly. A half-truth is the business of those whose half-truth is always their total confusion, whose skepticism is their sophistry and whose superstition keeps itself busy in scholastic metaphysics.

And what else could I have against Kant, if I did not know what belongs to him, and if I did not have to recognize that he is responsible for our new plunge into those hopeless depths of sophistry and scholasticism whereof the echoes resound all around! Only innocents can believe that scholasticism is simply a horrid cant that a few idlers, literally dealers in so-called metaphysics, have picked up from him in order to tout their rags.11

Even those who do not themselves perpetrate such things are also scholastic. Our whole era is profoundly scholastic. Indeed, all epochs, all collectivity standing under the domination of the Folk's way of thinking is scholastic, but ours is the most scholastic of all. All times are scholastic; of course, one had hoped that our human world could be freed from scholasticism and even nowadays some people go on believing that our world is already freed from it, from that refinement of form, bare of any content, without living spirit or any relationship to it; but instead it remains, complete with its unbreakable link to superstition (for one is absolutely wrong to see the nature of scholasticism only in forma and not at the same time in materia).

He who is capable of seeing is well aware of the fact that only those can get free who are not enslaved by the Folk's way of thinking, who in themselves and out of themselves have the awareness, the living spirit out of the deepest depth of their existence. The others, however, are taken in, again and again, by the Folk's scholastic demeanor. Our present times, indeed, are the most scholastic of all. Such scholastics as the ones we have nowadays, always sitting on two thrones with one rump, have there never been in any previous era. Until now, scholasticism has been a mix of skepticism and superstition; but this pairing has hitherto never been of such arrogance and brutality as we see in the joining of our skepticism with the dogmatism of our modern evolutionism: so empty, so bottomless, dropping to unfathomable depths between its mutually antagonistic poles of here-and-now and far-and-away! And there is not the slightest attempt made to reconcile these opposites, which of course are not even seen as such; for there is no living heartbeat behind the scene: their skepticism is not really skepticism and their superstition is not really superstition, and it's as ice-cold all around us as January's wintry depths.

Only in times as highly scholastic as these, where ideas are degraded to a rigid and polite mental fixity, whereof nothing transpires in the feelings of the educated individual and

nothing even makes him aspire to anything else—only here and now, among us, is possible such a confused association of ideas, running from two starting points to two opposite goals, such a miserable and eclectic concordia discors of skepticism and superstition, which have concluded their interim peace of stupidity. Stupidity, stupidity! A Greek sage has stated that doubt and amazement are the start of all reflection. No German nor other expert, however, will deny the fact that doubt and a stupid and frivolous indifference signify the end of all reflection. Thoughtless stupidity and words, nothing but words: everything coming down to a rhetorical scholasticism and to such a soulless thinking that one could hardly be farther away from Truth than in standing at the height of our culture.

From Truth? What is Truth?

Unfortunately I am not so uneducated as not to know how one reacts nowadays to this word. I know that our culture is so highly educated that one cannot anymore use the word "Truth" (with a capital "T") without making a fool of oneself; and sure enough, many of my intelligent readers have nurtured for quite a while already that famous question which indeed, one day, a cultured person put to me: "What is Truth?" I answered him that it is not my fault if he does not know it, and that I was sorry for him not knowing it. And I give the same answer to my readers here, and I remind them, and I beg them from the bottom of my heart, with all my love and honesty: Go, be severe with yourself; and try very hard to see if, after all, you cannot recognize the Truth.

To those who are incapable of it, by nature, I make no request whatsoever—but do I know to whom I am addressing myself? That wide open abyss of a frivolous skepticism, has it already swallowed up the whole world?! We live indeed in wretched times, where almost everybody is making fun of Truth; especially those who have devoted themselves to "scientific truth." Garbage of all shapes exists for them and they believe in it very strongly; but "the Beautiful" and "the True" do not exist for them, and that's why they laugh themselves silly! And we, of course, are expected to be ashamed to the bottom of our souls for our faulty education and for our immaturity, in the face of those who bombard us with their annihilating question: "What is Truth?"

For in this way they make you understand quite clearly that, as far as they are concerned, they have already taken much greater pains in the pursuit of Truth; and that, indeed, one must possess much stronger minds than ours in order to recognize the difficulties; and finally, finally, finally, the tragic impossibility of solving that problem! And, by the way, we could judge after their faces and gestures and their laughter how painfully that recognition affects them; and yes, they say, to be sure, there will be a constant progress in the cognizance of Truth, as eventually we will have advanced more and more in our evolutionism. You hopeless fools! That which would improve your understanding will never come. Start thinking with your own mind, which is good; or forget the whole thing!

But enough. Not that we said enough already, for we have not said anything as yet. But enough, as I intended, to point to my Doctrine where the subject is completely dealt with. Without the Doctrine, all this herein would mean just gossip: but now here it is, and here it comes—Watch out! It will come for many a one, for whom it will be of more vital concern than he might assume at the start; the word penetrates deep in his heart, and when I no longer whisper it into his ear, it will resound out of his own soul and will not leave him. It will become so for many a one who will finally obey the important message about our campaign for the rescue of the still existing Truth.

Hear it once more, you who live and do not despair, without even knowing about the life of Truth and without getting any help to overcome the traditional and commonplace patterns, by reminding you constantly of Freedom and Eternity—The Truth lives! Hear ye, hear gradually at least its announcement, coming from a very peculiar fellow. These are the times where they declare the Truth dead without even mourning the deceased (for we just reported that they laugh themselves silly about it!); and without being aware that instead of Truth, once more, a new superstition dominates them, down from its chair of arrogance and intolerance. These things are exactly as I say. They should take some advice and some information, but not inside their own class, among their peers, among the other crows, for honor is binding even between thieves; but rather among the outlawed, the cocky ones, who did not remain within the limits of their sacred evolutionism and of their skepticism, and who have not participated in the sanctification of the sacrosanct pillars of that new madness and of that slander of sane reason. But telling the truth has never been in vain, and how much less so the present saying concerning the eternal Truth: Truth, all-certain and all-dependable, the blissful Truth of the unique objective content of our mind is living—IS living!—against all superstition which, passing itself off for truth, cheats us out of Truth, and against all their sophistry, whereby Truth's very existence is denied; against skepticism, the slander of sound reason and the rejection of our own dignity, we will stand up, as long as we live, for that declaration and, in so doing, for our sacred right and for our eternal nobility: TRUTH IS ALIVE! And this is a life which is more precious to me than my own life: and it is as certain as is death for born creatures such as us.

If you are not too ashamed, go and see by yourself how that living Truth looks at the fool's and boor's place, who dares speak like that. But he does not pass off for Truth the superstition of the Jews, or of the Christians, or of those who advocate the "pantheism" of Spinoza—nothing is farther from him, since he knows that individuals other than Jews and Christians will quite sooner become true followers of Moses and of Jesus Christ, and since he knows how little those Spinozists have in common with Spinoza! However, it is still true that Moses, Christ and Spinoza are the great men of Truth, who all three announce the One Great Truth of the Spirit. All three. Spinoza not otherwise than Christ, Christ not otherwise than Moses, whose God says: I AM WHAT I AM (ie., the timeless

Beingness, the truly One-Being) and who could never have said: "Let there be!" And from the selfsame Moses resounds that still impressive and so mighty dictum: HEAR YE ISRAEL, BEINGNESS IS OUR GOD, BEINGNESS IS ONE! But how Israel hears, and how in the ears of Israel Truth immediately changes into superstition, thereof precisely this saying offers a world-famous example in all its horror. For this grandiose saying, at the same time an exultant hymn and an angry protest against idolatry of any sort, signifies now in the conception of Israel—of the Jewish, the Christian and the Mahometan Israel—that well publicized sentence in its stupid and false translation: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only God!" Moses did not say it in that way, for he had not spoken otherwise than Christ and Spinoza of the One and Only Truth of the Spirit. Reader, you do not know that Truth, and you have not the slightest idea of it. Do you know however what is known to you? That Phantom which resembles it, that Analogon or quid pro quo, the absurd bogey of the idols of Superstition adored by the Folk, you know it! Be it known to you in the form of religion, or in the form of the new superstition of evolutionism, and, you believe in it as if it were the Truth—or be it that you keep entirely to skepticism and refuse to hear about Truth, because you pretend to know everything which is advertised under that name? But I repeat once more: you know perhaps all those pretended truths, but of the real, One-and-Only-Truth, you surely do not have the slightest idea. And do not presume that we have exactly the same thing in mind as you, when you hear talk about it, namely some untenable and unthinkable entities, for our One-and-Only Truth is thought necessarily as soon as one really thinks, and there is no possibility, I say, that something else should also be the Truth; and, no possibility, neither, that there be no Truth at all. And, as far as your skepticism is concerned, wherein you believe yourself to be secure, I repeat once more that perfect philosophical indecision is a chimera and a self-deception; no human being, in the whole spectrum of creation, could be found whose mind is not based either on Truth or on Superstition.

And now, let me tell you what I have not reported as yet—the whole answer I gave to him who had asked me "What is Truth?“ I did not simply answer that I was sorry for him not knowing it, but I also asked him in my turn: As he did not know what Truth is, if at least he knew exactly what Superstition is, and what in general belongs to it? Watch out my friend, see where you stand and do not be ashamed! To know where you stand with your ideas, you must look in good faith to the ideas of others; and do not be ashamed, dearest man, and look further out for that One-and-Unique Truth. That one, I also proclaim—in my own way, as I think it good and necessary. Always aware of that Truth and always aware also of Superstition, I think it appropriate to proclaim Truth so as to unmask at the same time Superstition which is always dissembling in the colors of Truth. Believe me, it is necessary to do so and the ancient Lacaedemonians were right in showing to their children the disgrace of drunken Helots. The right thing as model is not sufficient; we need also a view of the absurd, to deter us from it. For who could think Truth if he thinks Absurdity in taking it for Truth? And since there is either the One or the Other, whereof each penetrates a mind and fills it completely, we must of necessity abandon and extirpate the Other when we desire the One. Do you still ask “What is Truth?" Very well. To your surprise we take it as a very serious question and its answer

to be in our charge; and those who consider it an impossible task will be astonished to hear that, voluntarily, we take a double charge on our shoulders, in adding the answer to that other question, "What is Superstition?" That other question which they did not ask, we will answer it unasked. This is necessary indeed—or could it be that they had already inquired in depth into the nature of Superstition? Methinks that they have not even started, but have forsaken it together with the inquiry about Truth. And, in being informed about the nature of Superstition, they will come to learn many unexpected things: about the concordance of all kinds of superstition, that there is only one Superstition—and ipso facto they will also learn unexpectedly something about the One Truth and its nature. And the two sets of data will fit into a unique model, supplying the all important answer to their question, and henceforth a fundamental change will take place in their behavior and in their expectations.

"What is Truth?" I have already mentioned how dangerous it has become nowadays to even use the word "Truth," almost as dangerous as it is to use the word "God," the main concept of their previous superstition: and how, in their conceited megalomania, they do not even expect any answer to, "What is Truth?"; so completely have they gone astray from Truth—and nevertheless that question still remains; it is the eternal question whereto there is the eternal answer which I also give. They may keep questioning, and hear the answer which will be new only insofar as it is connected to the answer to the other question, "What is Superstition?" This is a way which may help those who are presently cut off from Truth, but could still be rescued, since one cannot force them by miracles to believe in Truth. On the contrary, as they pretend all miraculous stories to be trash, one has to prove to them that, precisely, what they now believe in is in reality pure superstition, full of miraculous works. And a totally different relationship between superstition and Truth will become manifest to them, fundamentally different from the one taken for granted by the scientific enlightenment of our present state of the world. As to the pretense of our most enlightened and educated people, that Truth is not to be found anywhere, nor by anyone, whereas superstition exists in many people—well, is there nobody to see that this affirmation of an existing superstition and of a non-existing Truth amounts to a most inconsistent and absurd assumption? If the One IS, is the Superstition, then most certainly also the Other IS, is the Truth—which seems almost self-evident and becomes manifest and clear to one who has penetrated with us the nature of Superstition which is nothing other than perversion i.e., a perversion of the proper thinking of Truth, and hence could not be investigated otherwise than together with Truth; the being of Superstition is not even thinkable without the being of Truth. Truth exists as well as Superstition exists—this fact will become as convincing as the fact of day and night; and the one who has never believed that such a thing as Truth exists and could never exist for him, he may start believing, when he finds out that Superstition has been a reality within himself! And I repeat: he who really gets rid of Superstition will ipso facto become aware of Truth. We take very seriously the Truth, and so must we take very seriously also superstition, whereof I am here to reveal an amazing property: the truth of our thinking can only be stated per se as Truth, but is nevertheless capable of a demonstration, indeed: superstition penetrated to its very essence is actually an indirect demonstration of Truth!

But nothing will do and our way of approach will remain awkward and in vain, if we do not sit superstition at the right place, namely in ourselves, and proceed very seriously: not in that joking way, as we see all around us dealing with the numerous superstitions of the past and with the superstition of those staying behind. Not that useless business of our scholars in pointing to some manifest examples of an absurd superstition—not that condescending and cultured laughter about others, while Satan seizes us by the scruff of the neck and carries us off. To proceed seriously against Superstition means to recognize it so thoroughly in its essence, that it is still recognizable to us in all its eternally changing disguises—for this is the way Superstition proceeds and must proceed: in order to conceal its emptiness, it must eternally change its coverings and disguises, to be finally unmasked nevertheless. We must catch this one in its thousand shapes, and remain thereafter even the more on our guard and scrutinize ourselves constantly, to make sure that it has not taken hold of us in one of its newest and most dangerous disguises, wherein the eternal deceiver, once more, allures and catches and corrupts the most advanced and the most enlightened people of our times, in appearing to them as the epitome of Truth and Freedom.

There was and still is much to be done: even against accidental and minor dangers one has to be urgently and strongly cautioned. Those for instance who have been so miserably taken in by some friedrichnietzschean superlatives in their weakness—well then, to those who drown, it makes no difference if it is in the village pond or in the Atlantic Ocean. But the major danger still remains that big and wild Kantianism; we hit there upon waters which have neither bottom nor shores and we are completely lost. It is nowadays unavoidable that he who stands up for Truth must turn himself against Kant—and never will one be able to speak about Truth without speaking also of Spinoza; to whom, I believe, due importance and function is given in my writings, more than ever before, and in such opposition to Kant that perhaps even some of those who had lost their vision because of Kant will now be able to recover it thanks to Spinoza. Amen! And hence, blissful rejoicings all through the seven heavens!

Certainly, in order to know what I have to say about Spinoza and Kant, one must read the whole exposé in the connection and in the sequence that I have put it in accordance with my art. One must read it from the beginning to the end—for neither Spinoza nor Kant have ever been so important to any Spinozist or Kantian as they are to me; and nobody as yet has shown in the right light, as I have done it, the exceptional importance of both for purposes of orientation in human problems. That's why these two men are so closely and inseparably involved in the totality of ideas wherewith I hope to serve mankind's interests in matters of vital information. In order to hear about these two men, one will have to hear therefore my whole systematic exposé concerning mankind and, of course, about the eternal Truth. Quite certainly those whose interests are opposed to this and who stick rather to their preconceived opinions and to their self-deception, the indifferent whose dullness and carelessness are quite arrogant nonetheless, and not to forget that big class

of those who are impatient and have no time to waste except for idleness in futilities and whose impatience, laziness and bibliomania (so as not to die of their stinking boredom!) convincingly show that they lack also something else, namely the prerequisite—all these people will find much too long a coherent text demanding fifty hours of their lifetime. They will hardly understand what all this is about, and I will not be able to capture their attention for any longer than the time for them to pick up some sweets, which due to their haste, flippancy and hostility, will get perverted and vanish right at the picking, leaving behind, at the most, a supplement for their empty talks. But those who understand that which is understandable will behave differently, and those who are coming earnestly for the Truth's sake and are not looking for some pastime, they have all their time. "How about that," said Thrasymachus, "do you think these people come here to find gold rather than to hear speeches?"—"Yes," I answered, "But for a certain measure."—"For those who understand," said Glaucon, "the measure to hear such speeches is indeed their whole lifetime."

Those who understand shall find out how everything looks in its natural context, for what I have quoted here out of its connection (and though I did it myself) will seem extravagant enough even to them. They will see how the whole stands and supports itself, and even if it happened that they feel repulsed by many a detail—(indeed, it remains true also for the work as a whole, that it can speak only to those who will hear it up to the very end, even if at the start it has displeased them and has badly impressed them; hence, only to those who accept to be contradicted, a talent which according to Lessing, as far as scholars are concerned, is to be found only among the dead ones)—and even if, to start with, they are furious about what I have stated e.g., against Kant—they will nevertheless stand by and not reject the whole work because of that; they will not be deterred by some foreboding, nor by any misunderstanding arising along the way; but will stand by patiently, in remembering that at first one may be sometimes hostile, very hostile, to something which, later, one cherishes the most. And in such a manner it may, it will, it must finally occur that they share my views concerning Kant—they must only look very carefully at Kant, not simply to the particular issues, but also to the agreement between them and Kant as such, the perfect Folk's philosopher with his ideas; and they should not change their opinion simply because his words sound so strangely unpopular, nor because the great majority of the Folk stands behind him. And they must look at Kant as though they saw him for the very first time, and as if his writings were not yet printed, but stood in manuscript before their eyes! They must really hear the ideas of the man, and not be influenced nor disturbed by the fact that they are facing Kant's ideas. And next, they will hear also what may be said and even thought about those ideas of Kant. Now, if what I have said against Kant is not refuted in point detail, and if one does not prove that Kant did not say himself all those things which I have been quoting as being his own words, i.e., if they fail to establish that I have behaved in those matters as a phony and senseless reviler, scoundrel, forger and slanderer, it will happen (these alleged crimes being entirely imaginary, since, on the contrary, I have come in the name of all the Good), there will and must certainly flow from my words the necessary energy to make people turn away from Kant and turn to Spinoza, all those to whom the said Kant is not the mirror

and the expression of their own beingness, and who can enjoy true happiness and a really blissful life; which for nobody in the world can consist in something other than in the fact that he be transformed from a negatively to a positively thinking being, in becoming fully aware of the living reality whereto he belongs. What I am speaking about is necessarily coming, and will constitute the start of a much more important and gigantic transformation which also is coming, which in the advancement of the Esprital cause will reach its goal automatically. Mountains will not be leveled and waters of the seas will not dry out and our mother earth will continue, as usual, her orbit among the planets, heavily loaded with Superstition. But one thing will have changed: this state of entanglement of Superstition and Truth, which has dominated the history of mankind as far back as we know, this state of confusion will cease—one battle will be fought to its very end: the two kinds of equally indestructible thinking patterns will be separated after a bitter strife and, with them, the two mental species of human beings; whereof each will become aware of its specific inner difference, and who thereafter, in their separateness, will live together in better agreement than before! And the Esprital natures will find their own way of life! Thereto aspires our Esprital awareness which does not accept any hereafter-happiness, but wants all happiness and sanctity to be realized in this world and in this time! And as they are trying to realize that genuine life of Espritality, freed also externally from all coercion through superstition, so it will come to pass that they find their life! And everything will be with the Espritals and with the Folk as it is recorded in the Doctrine which got from them its name! But suddenly a strange idea crosses my mind: I follow it without running after, and without mingling with things wherewith I do not want to be involved. I comply thereto in my way, as I have learnt it from the wise king Solomon who says: "Answer the fool after his foolishness, otherwise he will believe himself to be intelligent"; but he also says: "Do not answer the fool after his foolishness, otherwise you will resemble him."

The public could judge it not very polite nor tactful on my part to speak so much and in such a manner about a work conceived by myself and to push forward so passionately my own venture (in calling it the Cause of Esprital Truth)—Oh! do we find such judges?! But the public may be mistaken with regard to its competence as a judge—and even as a public! Those who in all other respects show themselves stone-deaf on our behalf, as if they were all in all like the man on the moon, who has no ears and lacks many other things as well: instead of the one item, on account of which they sit in judgment over us, they should have rather understood that proclamation of ours which has been put in writing quite clearly and without any patching up: we are not of their writers and are therefore not bound to show them the usual tokens of respect! What they find fitting does not fit our hearts, which are full of something else than of their tactfulness; and when our thoughts flare up like flames to the skies, we are above the range of tactlessness.

Go ahead then, you tactful people, and prepare the Hell for me who carries the joy and the burden of my Doctrine among all those thoughtless, apathetic, indifferent, heartless, and tactful people. I cannot listen to you: but I will, untroubled, continue speaking to the others about my Doctrine, at all times and at all occasions; and those others will listen to me. They, who have not any cause of their own in this world besides this common cause of ours, the only which truly counts and which is sacred to us—they will not say that I am pushing forward my own venture. I cannot listen to you, nor wait with the pursuit of this cause until you may notice that it is not my property—since on the contrary, I am its subject and its servant—nor until you give me the instructions in what form and manner, tune and tack, I should pursue it. I might have to wait quite a while before you come to help me in the pursuit of a cause whereof the opposite is what you are promoting so stubbornly; until you help me against yourselves—for, don't you see that I am pursuing a cause against you, which hence could not possibly be my cause to you? On the other hand, your writers, as the golden daylight shines upon them, and as they tell and sing to you and for you, they all go after their own business, each one looking after his own vanity and folly; and though he must appeal to your vanity and folly and even—as some of your writers put it so proudly and disgracefully—lower himself to your level, whereas we say that he who wants Truth must ascend with us toward her. Your writers must put their causes into yours, and appeal to your vanity and folly, to your superstition and to your skepticism. Such are your causes; and you should not behave as if you had a common interest with us in a cause, but did not approve of the way we are pursuing it. Make as you wish, and have it your way with your authors, and for your cause, and keep it mutually in giving and taking as it suits your nature; but do not attempt to render us as vain as you are. We do not write that kind of stuff you call literature, a plaything which pleases you for a while and becomes boring—a fine literature that, which can become boring in its turn! Splendid truths, all those truths of your literature which after a while have become lies! With our literature we pursue the Unchanging One and the cause of our life—the extremely urgent duty to draw up into our daily life, from its hidden depth, our mind's awareness of Truth or Eternity in order that, as Truth remains firm in itself, we also may remain firm with our life on the firm foundation of Truth. Go along with that fact: we are not your writers, and you are not our public. We cannot ask you: "Hear ye also!" You do not hear and we do not speak to you about what you cannot hear; you have forgotten it when you drank from the cup of superstition. And we have ceased to speak to you about the Truth. Since we acquired clear insight into the nature of our thinking, we had to abandon that most pathetic dream: it is impossible that you ever become other, against your nature, and that your thinking could depart so far out of itself as to get eventually "bettered" into its opposite. In such a way you would be transformed into something else, i.e., destroyed—but you are, you are and remain what you are: the Folk. And we do not speak for you—only among and amidst of you!—as requires from us the still continuing state of promiscuity of the two kinds of human beings, so that, out of it, may join us those in whose souls the Truth, the awareness and reminiscence coming from their innermost depth, has remained awake; together with those in whose souls the longing for it is strong—the longing is the beginning of the remembrance and of the awakening. Might it come to pass that we all awake, that waves after waves of light penetrate us and that our life become wholly blissful!

3

This is my preface to the work of Meinsma, which promises to give for the first time a clear image of Spinoza's life and, since I am already in harness, the carriage will have to go as and whereto I pull it. My contribution concerns the inner life of Spinoza's ideas, according to their importance for us and for our ideas. This and nothing else is here my subject matter and it is about time that I start speaking about it. To be sure, there have been enough important people to whom Spinoza's ideas have meant quite a lot, but the advancement of the Cause of these ideas—for all ideas proceed from a cause, have a final purpose, a practical goal to attain, without which they are completely futile; and the cause of Espritality is ultimately the life of Espritality, as it is required from our Esprital awareness. The advancement of this our cause has stood still since the days of Spinoza. Indeed, who knows or who has told us that there is such a cause which we call ours and which we have to promote? As I know and as I talk about, I am also aware of the fact that I am serving that same One-and-Only and eternally constant and unchanging Truth and its Iause, as it has been uttered from all eternity by all the Espritals, whereof Spinoza—such as he has lived as the greatest of them—has been its wonderful legislator. This Iause counts more to me than Spinoza, for it is to me the One-Unique-and-the-All; and only through what he meant and means for that cause is Spinoza important to me. Speaking about him is for me equivalent to speak about our cause, which signifies quite a lot. How could I therefore act like that famous originalphilosopher of the neo-post-Christian era, that first freak of the evolutionist superstition? Am I a professional aphorist, so as to babble in haste and in windiness about the most earnest subject matter? Better to do nothing than to do that; if not done with all justification, thoroughness, objectivity, certainty and clearness so that, as lively as the real, it may touch and enrich us as decisively as reality itself—if not in that way, then rather nothing at all and never! And then there would be nothing more left for this preface than to serve as an indicator to that other work, as a simple guide thereto. In the continuity of its convincing discourse, the Doctrine of the Espritals and the Folk gives also about Spinoza all the vital information which hitherto has remained unexplored, stressing his importance and his necessity for our thinking.

We need Spinoza and we need ways of approach to him. We need commentaries which open for us the Ethics and introduce us to that center-point of world literature. Of course, the works serving such a purpose will have to be of another kind and skill than those having appeared up to now, and bring to light something else than the petty stuff of scholastic erudition we are familiar with, and which cannot be even an accessory to any honest work. What a shame indeed! Who would waste his time with erudition more than absolutely necessary, and as fitting the measure of his scientific level?! One should finally stop confusing science with erudition. Science needs erudition, as I said, just fitting the level of the ideas involved in a study: but erudition without ideas, wide reading, bookishness, sciolism relying on memory and without reflection, this all is not as yet science, and such non-thinking scholars or philologists are not as yet prominent scientists; to praise them for their erudition is one of the follies of our culture. The erudite philologists! Who does not know by what problems they are tortured, what kind of straw they thresh, what they do and how they do it! And how could one still deny that our times are the most scholastic of all? For what is scholasticism? Scholasticism is pedantry in that thinking that is without any relationship to life and Truth: and because our times are so super-scholastic, do we have that plethora of erudite philologists—especially we Germans, wholesale dealers in erudition—the immense number of those philologists who grow broader only on the surface and who ignore completely the depth; writing always about other people and about their ideas, without ever conveying more of it than the words and a lifeless framework; they are of those dead souls who need not be killed first by the letter, whom no spirit could revive, and life is to be found in their old books only when worms inhabit them. Our philologists, with their insoluble riddle about the origin of all those useless, insipid and nonsensical topics which overcrowd them (e.g., what would have happened if our Spinoza had married, or how the rhinoceros should be called if he did not carry a horn on his nose?); incapable of seeing the difference between something good and something totally bad, lazy in their thinking, crippled in their language, with their gigantic boredom: to read them cheats you of your own ideas and renders you gloomy. It would be quite difficult to decide which of the two intolerable species of educated people are the most obnoxious: the literary men, those scholastics without erudition and without any sufficient knowledge, who are taken in by any rush of taste or distaste, to convince the public that only poetry is literature, and show us what poetry is in trying to revive thousands of dead souls of their own kind (laudo ut laudes)—or rather our philologists, the scholastics who busy themselves with erudition and who kill the living whenever they take on some really great spirits as object of their occupations and of their destructive business. No scandal, methinks, is more disgusting than to see an Esprital, a freethinker and especially a philosopher, in the hands of those bookish fools—yes, especially a philosopher: because in philosophy a purely erudite knowledge is of least importance and most destructive, whereof already Seneca bitterly complains: Quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est. The philosophizing without philosophy of those spiritless talkers, of those awful talkers, cannot be other than falsification and pure nonsense. Oh, what horrible sounds invade us from their mountains of barbaric foreign words, when we compare their platitude and emptiness with the noble ideas they are trying to imitate! A thousand times comes to my mind the legend of Orpheus and Neanthos: "the Menades of Thrace had torn Orpheus into pieces and thrown his head and his lyre into the river Hebros; the head lay upon the lyre and sang elegies, whereas the

wind rustled in the strings and made them resound in harmony with the songs. Thus, both floated melodiously on the waves, and were transported to the shores of Lesbos, where the lyre was kept in the Temple of Apollo as a votive offering. After many years it happened that Neanthos, the son of king Pittakos, experienced a violent desire for that lyre, whereof he had heard how it enchanted wild beasts, trees and rocks, and that even after Orpheus' death, without being touched, it had given up melodies. He bribed the priests of the Temple, who delivered him the lyre; and at the onset of night he went to the suburb; and imagining himself to be the heir of Orpheus and to delight the whole world, he started belaboring the strings in a clumsy and repugnant way. Attracted by the cacophony came up running a pack of dogs, numerous in that region, and tore him into pieces, so that the unfortunate Neanthos resembled Orpheus, at least insofar as he, too, attracted dogs.

Spinoza needs apostles of a sort other than the philologists who rather deter people from him. But Spinoza had a real evangelist, and we have possessed for a long time a description of his life which satisfies us. I don't think that one should give us a new one. What is meant here, of course, is his personal record. The genuine grandeur of his life, as it has positively existed, could hardly be described, nor even imagined, because that life stands above everything we are capable of doing with our lives. I will try nevertheless to give some indications about it; afterwards I will speak of that old and remarkable evangelist of Spinoza, and finally also about the book of Meinsma.12

Without any doubt, the greatness in Spinoza's life is the fact that he lived and represented with his life—as did Jesus Christ—everything he taught. Both Christ and Spinoza have taught with their ideas as well as with their life; in both, life and thinking were in perfect harmony—and both agree in the same. Christ has most certainly also thought as well as lived the very essential, the eternal Beingness within the finitude of his existence, the Unity of the relative with the absolute –: "I and the Father are One," "God is love," "So that they all may be One, as Thou, Father, in me and I in Thee!" With their pellucid conscience and awareness of the Truth, these two men help truly and completely, and can bring salvation to all those who have the prerequisite awareness, and the love of it. In removing the spell of the world of appearances with their words which conquer and liberate the innermost of our soul, Christ and Spinoza become the two major figures of our species and of our history.

Christ was as clear as Spinoza. Speaking of Christ, Spinoza says that he reached the highest degree of perfection, above all others. But one should rely only on the sayings coming undoubtedly from Christ, on those great and pure statements which can only be his, and not on those popular distortions and additions which are to be found already in the oldest gospels. Christ has not written himself, as has done Spinoza. Therefore, and since he chose the way of philosophical development, Spinoza is to us the more accessible and through him we grasp, in all its splendor, that greatness of harmony

between living and thinking. If Christ himself had written, his image would have been in many respects clearer to many people, as well as the best demonstration of the fact that an Esprital remains completely untouched by the prejudices and superstition of his time. People do not have the slightest idea of it, but, on the contrary, are instinctively inclined to prove the opposite of it. And where that proof is not possible, as in the case of Spinoza, where it is clear beyond doubt that he kept aloof from the superstition of his time, the selfsame instinct prevents them from even becoming aware of it, let alone thinking about. They remain stock-still, each one of them, about that fact, as if it didn't exist in the world—for such a fact is perilous for their theory of the one humankind and for their honor, because this fact would undeniably attest the truth of the two kinds of human beings, as well as the specific difference between Esprital natures and theirs, the Folk's. In their opinion, indeed, all people are of the same kind, all human beings think in the self-same way as they do, and all are proud of their generation, as they are—and some even in advance of their generation (as they pretend to be), and they would not even abandon their likeness with Christ: he was not (as they affirm privatissime) in all respects in advance of his generation, but indeed in many respects—and if He had had the chance to live in times as advanced as theirs, he would have thought in many respects more clearly: he would have certainly benefited also from Kant and would have expressed himself correctly: "I and the Postulate are One," and he would have quoted pearls from Nietzsche, which immediately would have been trampled by the swine. Spirit remains to them eternally a mystery and, in the same way, lives like those of Christ and Spinoza remain an impenetrable mystery to their spiritless contemplation. As long as they themselves belong to the superstition of the time in which an Esprital e.g., Christ has lived, they pull downwards his life into that superstition, and, in the meantime, they fail to see the uniqueness of his life, which is by far more miraculous than all their miracles, more than had He been the Virgin's son. And when afterwards the time comes for the transition to a new superstition, then they simply make Him as sophisticated as they are themselves, as are their philologists, so that He vanishes in their insipid platitude; and the miracle of His life is henceforth overshadowed by their madness. The miracle of an Esprital life constitutes indeed a true miracle for the relativity of our practical understanding, and, at the same time, bears witness to the eternal Truth. In the midst of our relative limitation, the presence of our Esprital thinking (in love, in art, and in philosophy) is undeniable evidence of the Eternal. The same evidence is borne out by the miracle of a life of Espritality, of a life in harmony with its thinking.

And why then, the Folk will ask, should this "harmony between one's life and one's thinking" be something so crucial that because of it we cannot understand, for example, Spinoza's life? Doesn’t that exist in all of us?—My answer is: no. By "thinking" one must not understand simply having this or that particular idea or thought; what is meant here is the harmony between one's life and one's real consciousness, the totality and breadth of one's ideas. One must know these ideas as Spinoza knew them, in order to understand with which ideas his life has harmonized. One has to understand that leading a blissful

life, in harmony with real ideas, means nothing less than living with the ideas of Reality, hence with Reality itself; in other words, to know oneself in the Unity-of-True-Reality.

He who can give these words their true meaning will have in his mind what the others do not have at all with their "harmony of life and thinking," when, for instance, they use it to pay tribute to the deceased in a funeral oration; or, rather harmlessly, repeat it in a death announcement: but, of course, they would most like to hear it applied to themselves. What a tremendous abuse of noble words is going on amongst us! And how often does one hear great statements and expressions which have nothing to do with real impressions! To the point that if one took literally the Folk's talk, one should gain a totally distorted image of our world. But such talk is so little taken "literally" that nobody thinks anymore about its true meaning; and almost all of our great words are depreciated to such a degree that whenever their meaning is properly applied, one has to insist on it with constant begging and entreating. Harmony of life and thought is something overwhelmingly great, and nobody has shown it as clearly as Spinoza: all other people live, in fact, in disagreement with their convictions. None of them lives truly monistically; they all live utterly dualistically and torn apart. Wherever you hear them speaking about the truth of their ideas, look at their life wherewith they belie those ideas. Do not all of them live with the feeling of their insufficiency, weakness, infirmity; in discontent, worry, sorrow; in expectation, wishing, longing; in passion, in quarrel, in enmity with those of their kind, in fear of a thousand evils and of death, and of all the things they will have to abandon and to quit—and is this anything other than discord and dissension? And therefore, are not their thoughts altogether in disagreement with their life and destiny; and with the course of changing things in the Universe? Even if they have ideas, they are lacking the primary condition for a harmony between their thought and their life, namely that their ideas harmonize with each other and that their ideas be as real as their life is real. It is absolutely impossible to live in harmony with other thoughts than the ones of Reality and Truth—but what have the scholastic fooleries of their originalphilosophies in common with the living Reality? Or, perhaps, could he live in harmony with two a priori forms of intuition, twelve a priori categories of understanding, four antinomies and three postulates?! Oh! What thoughts they have when they do have thoughts and search after Truth!? Spinoza, on the other hand, differed completely from such a truth-searcher of original-inventions-on-paper and he did not have ideas, he was his thinking. Spinoza's life was the idea identified with the thinker. And that's why I say that in order to know what he has lived for, one has to know what he has been thinking— Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum, together with the thereto pertaining Omnia animata quamvis diversis gradibus and soaring far beyond: Substantia constans infinitis attributis: this has he lived! Such was, seen from inside, his blissful life conducted in the purest harmony with the thoughts of living Reality. These ideas—nothing on earth is more sublime: he who has penetrated into their sacred depth, he is with Truth; and Truth has blessedness for company. With these two ideas, if I may say so, are designated the two stages of a happy life. The first stage of happiness is to know the identity of our mind with our body i.e., of our thinking with the thinghood in motion and to know oneself to be part of the universal life of the world, to be One with the world of the Thinking-Thinghood-in-Motion. The second stage of happiness is the awareness of the identity of this world of relative being with the true

beingness of the spirit. Thinking both, his relative reality on the basis of the absolutely real beingness, he has lived not disunited with his real being, a life of joyousness, of glory and of love in unison with world and spirit.

If we do not understand such a life, then it is all this that we do not understand; but the fact of this life is undeniable. What actually emerges of such an interior bliss in the form of his exterior life, has been attested by a gospel more authentic and more noteworthy (as we will soon see) than the life of Christ: by the gospel of Colerus. The fact of that life is therefore before our eyes and we have to qualify it a truly blissful life, whose aspect deeply touches our hearts. It is the more so as we penetrate deeper into that event, whereby the whole truth—referring to the idea of Unity—is revealed precisely in the extreme case of a life which seemed to be completely remote from that truth and peace. That life appeared indeed suited by all means to go down in disunion and oblivion: the man came out from the most humiliated and the most despised community of the land, and from such a community he was cast out so radically that even the members of his own family avoided him like the plague, and even worse than that, since "nobody was allowed to contact him, either by word of mouth or by writing, nor stand at less than four yards from him, nor read anything he had composed or written."13

In addition it was also a life of extreme poverty and of a pernicious illness, of a completely solitary man, who (the only one in his time) did not belong to any community, did not feel himself related to any and who remained also completely solitary with his ideas, in overt opposition to the whole human world—and, nevertheless, that feeling of unparalleled happiness. And it was not only a life of such loneliness, poverty, illness, malediction and banishment; but also of being persecuted by a deadly hatred which, most certainly, would have murdered him if malady hadn't done it first—and nevertheless that absence of all bitter feelings and that true serenity of an unparalleled peace of mind. And in spite of such a life of both illness and persecution, with a name in such universal disrepute that even one hundred years later one spoke of him as of a "dead beast", that from such a life, as an unparalleled fruit, he produced that edifice, The Ethics. This is more than could be accomplished by anyone else, with nothing comparable to it ever done, neither before him nor after him. Was it then exaggeration when I spoke of the three miracles of Spinoza, and when I have called this three times heroic man the most valiant, the strongest and the healthiest of all men? In exchange for his strictly physical illness, he was free from all the other illnesses whereto people are subjected, who are healthy in their bodies but assailed by the many ills of superstition in their souls. And as testimony for what counts more than health and malady, this great man, in his frailty, has accomplished with his life what not even the healthiest has ever done. With his forces remaining undiminished up to the end, such that not a single day of his life was lost, he succeeded in shaping his existence into a life of Espritality and into a symbolic representation of his doctrine. He shaped it so as to make it the life of the truly perfect Sage—but on that account one should, least of all, compare it to the life of Greek philosophers with their beards and mantles. There is no other life which is so completely an exemplar of the thinker, of a true sage, who does not search for wisdom but has found

it and who is quite secure in its possession and practice. It is not the life of a philosopher, but of the sophos who has transformed philosophizing into real thoughts; and from that uniqueness among thinkers, testifies also the unique venture of his life. A life, indeed, of a different kind than the life of those Greek philosophers, which generally appear pretentious and sketchy14, whereas this one has been uprightness itself, truthful and clear and of an absolute geniality. Representing the Idea with his life, which life he modified as much as possible after the Idea, whereto it was subordinated and yielded as matter yields to the artist; and as his life, so also his word. Absolutely genial appears Spinoza's life—independent from the imitation of others and, nevertheless, not at all undertaken as some bold venture (whereto the forces of one's own nature do not suffice in the long run), or in an inadequate evaluation of the environment and of events: the real genius undertakes nothing which would not perfectly succeed. Not otherwise than genial must be called his life, which was as original as it was also natural to the highest degree; and as serious and necessary as Nature herself, and not merely because it completely succeeded. Simply and solely also because he was so free and happy in the geniality of his life did he reach that independent greatness in the geniality of his creation; also, because he did not live with people who could have prevented him from living in harmony with the inwardness of his thoughts, and he was so sure of his thoughts that nothing happened which could have kept him therefrom. Very early he had purified himself of sorrow and despondency; and, sanctified by the eternal ideas, he kept on living in peace with fortune and misfortune (because where Unity is, there exists neither fortune nor misfortune) as a free and a pure, as a blissful and a holy man. Thus he had found beyond any measure what he had searched and whereof he had given the heart-stirring description at the start of his On the Improvement of the Understanding —He who thinks like that as a searcher, how must he be after having found! That description (from On the Improvement of the Understanding) is the most wonderful prelude to the Cause of Philosophy i.e., to the life of Freethinking and Espritality, in the way Spinoza lived it. If one wishes to see what Spinoza has lived, one has to see what he has searched for and what he has found. Read the starting sentences of the just quoted work in one draught with the beginning and the end of the Ethics, and thus you will have both the searched for and the found; and what Spinoza found is precisely what he had searched for and the whole was his personal experience. Spinoza searches differently from the "researchers": from the very start his thoughts are directed toward the life he is searching for, and his philosophical work is named Ethics because therein is met the life he has searched for and found. The beginning and the end of the Ethics mark the depth and the height of the convictions embodied by the living Spinoza.

Here we have the idea thought right to the end, the only truly thinkable idea, the truly essential idea of unity between the limited and the eternal, or, what is the same, relativity thought from the angle of Absolute Beingness. There is no separation any more: the limited quantum of thinghood in motion and the eternity of the essential Being are not two entities, different one from the other, but are truly ONE, and are thinkable only

together, only one by the other, only as one into the other. In the awareness of his relativity and negativity, the finite individual comprehends himself in his eternal beingness which he is in truth. Finiteness and Eternity are one, coincide absolutely: finiteness is not: only eternity is absolutely. Finiteness is the eternal itself as it appears in the finite conscience—that is to say: God or Nature, or the absolutely infinite Being, which is grasped by our finite understanding under the attribute of extension and under the attribute of thought. If we understand that, we understand perfectly the harmony between Spinoza's life and his thinking: this harmony between his finite life and the eternal ideas, this harmony, was their identity! To have been aware of the whole depth of his soul was the immense feat of his life. The temporal human being Spinoza had totally passed over to the eternal, had penetrated with his temporary life into the eternal Beingness, a homecoming which made him approach the truth of eternal Beingness during his very bodily existence. The eternal truth, the truth of the Spirit is always present, the Kingdom of Heaven is always and everywhere present and is not a goal of timeliness: all times are at their goal for the thinking one, and each moment is eternity. With the individuality of his life he had entered the all pervading clarity, happiness, love (Amor Dei intellectualis) of the All-One-Infinite-Beingness; and he was eternal in his life: he had tasted the eternal Being during his lifetime—or, if one wishes to say it in the great metaphor, one may use the same simile for Spinoza as for Christ: God-becoming man and man-remaining God.—"Who remains in love, remains in God and God in him." He shows himself as near as possible, and astonishingly near, to what is asserted about the Divine: resting in himself, always sure of himself, self-sufficient in his own blissful perfection, not aspiring to any temporary property, expecting nothing, allowing nothing to himself, no possession, no paternal inheritance, no legacy from strangers, no annuity, no gifts, no professorship; even his name he did not wish to be put on the title page of his work of philosophy, which had to be published only after his death.15 And, as I already said, he has lived only that which harmonized with his ideas of Reality. Not only did the great unselfish man not aspire to all those things which seem desirable and indispensable to others: burdened with all that seems unbearable to people, he was happy, happy in his ideas on eternity and on infinite love, as also in this world of change and of decline, and on his life in it. Happy were all his days, and never did one find him sad, and never did he show himself overwhelmed by some emotion, and never a sound of complaint passed his lips, neither about the persecutions, nor about his malady. And now I have only to add: never could he have experienced something which would have contradicted his ideas. When, in 1672, he was suspected to be a French spy, and one had to fear that the populace would break into the house, Spinoza comforted his landlord with these words: "Do not fear anything; as soon as there shall be the slightest clamor at the door of your house, I will walk out and face directly the people, even if they intended to treat me in the some way as they had treated the poor brothers De Witt!"—who had been torn into pieces—and thus he would have suffered martyrdom and he would not have clamored in agony those dreadful words: "My God, my God, why has Thou abandoned me?!"—Ecce homo!—not from Spinoza. He was the man whose soul could not be seized by any mourning. He stood above tragedy! This is already demonstrated by the way he had conducted his life—for his life had taken a tragic turn. He stood really above tragedy. So perfectly could all his ideas stand the course of reality, so powerful had he grown through his thinking the Truth, and so secure was his life, invisible in its bliss, and not subdued by

any humiliation nor suffering. By assiduously shaping his own character this man had perfected himself in such a way as to remain totally pure in his being whilst he was considered so unclean by others, and treated by them with such ignominy, since he was free from all inner shame, and from all remorse, and lived in total freedom from affectivity. One single affection was in his soul: the passion and the enthusiasm of thinking; all his life was filled up with it.

Thinking is the strongest passion, and the thinker is the most passionate of men; he has depths of passion in his intense feeling and willing. With a heroic effort coming from the depth of human nature, he accomplishes things which obtain the greatest and everlasting success, and he reaches world dominion in the fullest sense of the word. Over the changing creatures of all times, of all realms, he with his ardent passion and solitude—for genius is always solitary, a solitary creator—he "makes mankind advance much farther then millions of reasoning and fraternally reveling empty-headed people." The passion for thinking is characteristic of the philosopher, as in general for all Espritals; only the power and the brilliance of this passion makes the greatness of the sublime Esprital natures (nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit).Where such a passion exists for one of the three forms of thought—Philosophy, Art, Love—there is the heartbeat of Espritality; that passion is the touchstone of an Esprital being, it is the longing of the soul for absolute Truth, for the reunion with Unity, for the penetrating of the higher awareness into the finite conscience, so as to fill it with lucidity and bliss.

Art, Philosophy, and Love are the three different paths of the one-and-the-same passion of an Esprital soul. People who cling to their relativity do not suffer from such a passion and ignore it; that's why their thinking never exhibits any warmth, any fervor or sublime joyousness,16 because it is only the relatively thinkable, and our soul can show a vivid desire only for what is truly her element, the absolutely thinkable; hereto aspires her love for happiness. The soul passionately struggles to quit the world of illusion for the realm of Truth; and she reacts also with passion against things which stand in her way, against the whole empty life of relativity, and against all those whose conscience remains entrapped there and imprisoned forever. That's why Christ says that he does not bring peace, but the sword! From Christ's life we know relatively more details than from Spinoza's, which is known to us only in its contours. On the other hand, Spinoza has written, while Christ's mission was accomplished through his speaking. From Spinoza we do not have such vehement outbursts as: "Woman, what do I have in common with thee?" and: "Leave the dead to bury their own dead!" This was the sword in Christ's words beside the peace. In the same way, although differently expressed, you hear it also in Spinoza's words. But that sword is also for the sake of peace and for the sake of Truth. There is no working for Truth without working against Falsehood which is obstructing its voice; and only before the enemies of Truth who face him, and only at what he suffers through them, lights up the great creation in the creator of Truth. His life and his creation are reactions against what Truth has suffered in him—it goes together with the relentless longing of his soul after its happiness. It is the passionate trend of his thoughts. You do not mistake it in Spinoza's words, or else you have remained completely on the surface—

of course, that surface is like ice, but pay attention, and go to the open places, and you will hear the rush and the roar of the impetuous and gigantic stream. If you do not perceive, besides the peace of truth, also that other, that protest which finds its expression in his life exactly as in the words of his doctrine, then you have failed to grasp the miracle of that life and of that creation. There is a specific violent emotion whereof Spinoza was never freed, nor could have been freed. He was a human being among other human beings, he was the highest of all men with the highest human task, but he was a man and not a god.

He was a man and not a god, he was the highest of the Esprital men—among men. He lived all so that the whole thinking of truth beams toward us from his life. Even as far as the outer conduct of life is concerned, it was a model of Espritality; as much so as possible in a mixed society of Espritals and the Folk, dominated by the Folk’s commonplace beliefs, under which he lived and under which, even today, our own lives are placed—and just as badly does it go. This is the other grandeur of his life—and also similar to that of Christ—that he demonstrates the typical destiny of an Esprital among the Folk. Spinoza resembles Christ in so many ways, in his humiliation as well as in his greatness; he also became only much later a cornerstone, after having been thrown out by the builders and after having been during his lifetime a stumbling-block and a boulder of discontent to them. And just as his life and his doctrine bear witness to him, so does also the greatness of his disciples who joined him with passionate love and enthusiasm. Only about Christ have such words of praise been uttered as those paid to Spinoza. The life of Christ and the life of Spinoza are the most remarkable and most important landmarks in human history. By their conduct of life in harmony with their Esprital awareness and by the destiny they had to endure as a consequence of it, Christ and Spinoza have become with their lives examples and symbols of an absolutely unique kind. They entice even the common individuals to imitation or at least to admiration, which by the way is but a form of imitation. In our species imitation has an influence and an importance far greater than generally admitted. Here I cannot develop that subject further, but since analogical Superstition, by its very nature, stands to Spirit in a relationship of imitation, it is only natural that also the Folk, out of admiration, imitate the great Esprital exemplars and their teachings—of course, after having duly adjusted and "corrected" the heroes to fit their own patterns and to become their leaders; in debasing Espritality to the level of their own superstition; and in making out of Christ's teachings a theism and out of Spinoza's teachings a pantheism. What attracts so irresistibly the Folk's attention to Christ and Spinoza, almost as much as the pretended following of their teachings, is the uniqueness of their lives and destinies, the uniqueness and the destiny of their thoughts. But the Folk do not realize at all that what is so alive in Christ and Spinoza remains forever extraneous and antagonistic to their own nature, nor that the treatment these two men have received should be of an extreme concern also to them; it concerns the People of today exactly as if they had been present there and had participated! Of course! People constantly believe that had they been present in those days, it would not have happened in the same way!? But at the next occasion they will be there, participating, lending a helping hand, I swear

it—the Folk are always there, and lend a helping hand, are at all moments out to crucify Christ, and to sound the trumpets of doom over Spinoza, and to curse him, and to persecute him up to his death. What is it, that they so hate and persecute with such a blind passion? The Divine, as it is dead in themselves, so they wish it to be dead also in others: they wish to murder God himself!

I have intended however to speak about that gospel which already exists and which contains everything necessary to know about Spinoza's course of life. That ancient gospel speaks appealingly even to people for whom the work itself does not sufficiently praise the master, and who, without it, would not believe that a master of such a great work had to be of necessity a very great and decent person (since of the popular saying:"a great man but a bad character," either the one or the other qualification is simply never true!). That gospel, whose testimony perhaps adds to the solemnity of the master's ideas—about what else do I speak than of the classic Evangelium Coleri?

The biography written by Colerus has become a real gospel. What it lacks as an Evangelium is amply compensated by the fact that it is an enemy who reports. What a spicy joke History has made up for the most serious of its cases: precisely a man like Colerus had to testify against his own will in favor of Espritality—he, one of the lords spiritual, a clergyman! To be sure, it has been rumored about Colerus that he might have been a crypto-Spinozist, for in those times also existed people who were open-minded, but behaved differently in public and descended down all the steps to rejoin the others; there exist such people even today; there exist beggars who can run, but for whom it is more profitable to limp. But to assume such an attitude on the part of Colerus is just totally unfair; his whole life contradicts such a hypothesis and speaks for an honest man who almost certainly "did not go to church wearing a cloak of ungodliness." He was in bitter earnest in refuting Spinozism, with the purpose "to instill terror and abomination into Christian readers against the writings and the teachings of that man, against the venom, the atrocious lies and blasphemies of B. de Spinoza, the meanest of all atheists." If one does not believe the biography, one should read Colerus' other work: "La verité de la Resurrection de Jésus-Christ défendue contre Benoit de Spinoza et ses sectateurs." A disguised enthusiast for the teachings of Spinoza does not speak in it and cry out, "May the lord annihilate thee Satan and silence thee forever!"; and would not have shown such indignation because the bills of the funeral clerk, of the surgeon and of the plumbers spoke about "master Spinoza of blessed memory!" No, as everything is unique with reference to Spinoza, so is also unique the case of his evangelist. Since the days of Bileam, son of Beor, it has not happened that a man who came to curse, has instead blessed in such a strange way. And yet, there has been one more of the same: History has repeated itself in using the self-same strange way, and in the same case, which must have been especially dear and important to mankind. At that other time then, in those days when Kant came to the limelight, Immanuel Kant, the great antagonist of Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, who was the revenge for Benedict Spinoza—in that great distress, History knew not of a slyer help than to plagiarize herself, in resorting again to her own genial mean! For, see for yourself! Not only the first evangelist, but also the first apostle

of Spinoza, thanks to whom "he has celebrated his rebirth," was an enemy, a Saulus who did not become a Paulus, but remained a thorough Saulus. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, an earnest and important enemy of Spinozism, has become very much against his will the chief apostle of Spinoza and, although an enemy, had to give his blessings : "I bless thee, great, yea, Saint Benedictus! However thou mayst have philosophized about the nature of the Supreme Being, and mayst have erred in words, His Truth was in thy soul and His Love was thy very life!"17

As was Jacobi, so was also Colerus an honest enemy who, despite hurling imprecations at Spinoza's doctrine, had to heap blessings on his life for its purity, and, precisely for that reason, there is no other gospel more worthy of belief than the biography of Colerus as far as Spinoza's life is concerned, his conduct and his sufferings; since for the doctrine we have Spinoza's own words. I place Colerus above all the other evangelists, and if one intended to ascribe to each of them cherubic attributes, like to those who reported Christ's life, I would ascribe to Colerus, the angel; to Lucas, the lion; and to Bayle, the ox. We do not need a better life of Spinoza than that reported by Colerus: it is in all respects the best, if one does not request an extreme precision of all data; and this is certainly not less valid for Spinoza than for Christ. What does it matter to us to know exactly all the data, when something else entirely matters to us? Nobody, I think, would like to exchange Matthew's gospel (the noblest of all tragedies, with Jesus Christ as the leading star) for a modern and scientific biography of Mr. Joshua Josephson, even if it is precise and goes into all details. To me, Colerus' gospel is incomparably more important than all present and future biographies concocted by those dreary and nonsensical philologists of Spinozianism (sic!) . Biographies after the taste of those people, about men like Spinoza and Christ, are moreover—to tell them in a nutshell the main point—absolutely impossible! What they pass off as such is still and always the old story, rendered completely tasteless and almost unrecognizable in their blockhead dressing. What we would like foremost to know they will have to let stay in the dark for eternity, except if brand new sources open up and buried documents be brought to light, which is very improbable. And on that account we ought to be very pleased that of the thousand trifles and of all the family quarrels and squabbles of the neighborhood and among their contemporaries, almost nothing has come down to us, neither about Spinoza nor about Christ.

The Jewish "Tholdoth Jeschu Hanozri" from the Late Middle Ages bears the mark of most vicious and disgusting inventions, which do not revert even to the oldest tradition; and that book does not possess more factual value than the childhood gospel, or the Portuguese life of Jesus in the womb of Mary. We shall be very pleased should each relative (of a great man) remains undiscovered, in order that all the gossip of old aunts, which at the time was paid no attention to, do not suddenly become of primary importance to our scientific biographers of today, with their evolutionist mania: "Exactly like his mother!—Spitting image of his father—Isn't it the grandfather in person?- There is evidence that already his great-grandmother has been allergic to strawberries—And here are his teachers, and here are the names of the authors he has read...." Finished and

bound, our great man is completely explained as a product of evolutionism. We can only hope that some great men may be spared such treatment and that some trifles about their lives may remain unexplained! We are happy that those who have informed us about Christ and his sayings were not some philological life-portrayers and snoopers, for we would have hardly gotten what we presently have. Piscatoribus creditur, non Dialecticis, and may the good old things be eternally preserved and protected from our modern Diaskeuasts!18 How nice everything would be if our philologists come to the sudden insight and understanding that all their productions are by definition useless and worse than what already exists. In order to rectify some errors of no vital importance, one should not make so much noise. One may rectify those trifles, but in so doing one has not created some new and for the first time truthful life-description and one should not publish such great books (once more for the first time) about the real and truthful life of Spinoza. Verily, if philologists could realize—but, oh! the philologists! "We are afraid, but we do not lose heart."

And Meinsma's work, whereto I am writing this introduction?

That's something very different. The proper value of this work lies elsewhere than as a biography of Spinoza. It is true, however, that with his diligence and skill, Meinsma has clarified some dark spots in Spinoza's life, and has provided some new ideas and data. But if many of these items are very welcome, all these items and data are not so important as to justify the assertion that one has finally succeeded in providing a different and better mental image of Spinoza's life, since in truth our mental image of Spinoza's life has remained essentially the same, and is still known to us only in its broad outline and in its headlines. For those few real corrections made in the restricted domain of Spinoza's biography (and which have already entered our recent literature, since Meinsma's work was published way back in 1894; and, since then, some new identifications have come forward, chiefly with the publication of J. Freudenthal's, The biography of Spinoza through original texts, documents and non-official sources, Leipzig, 1899)—Meinsma's corrections, per se, would not have justified at present a German translation of his work.19

The chief merit of Meinsma's work resides not in a new Spinoza lifestory, as he asserts in his Introduction, and with your permission—although he does not intend to give something else, he has given his work the correct title "Spinoza en zyn kring" (Spinoza and his circle) in the right appreciation of the real facts; and, still not satisfied with that, he added a second title: "Historisch-kritische Studien over Hollandse Vrygeesten" (Historico-critical studies about the Dutch Freethinkers). I say a second title, for such is really the case. If it were a simple subtitle it should have merely explained and enlarged "Spinoza and his circle", which it does not. The book deals indeed to a very large extent with freethinkers who are not at all part of Spinoza's circle, and who lived long before his time; and, some of them, with such a conduct of life that the others could hardly have spent their life in the same circle together with them. All this points to the content of the book which makes it valuable, and whereby, indirectly, some knowledge is gained about Spinoza's life, such as has never existed before, and has not been made superfluous by

more recent publications: the very intimate knowledge of those times wherein one finds placed Spinoza's life. Meinsma has truly given us the color and the shape of that world of yonder and of those days, not only better than before, but in correcting fundamentally our mental image of it. On the other hand, thanks to his work, our ideas about the free Holland of those days experience a distressing rectification; and, what's more, some expressions in Spinoza's writings are seen now in a different light: one will learn indeed that they were meant to be ironical.

For his cultural portrait we owe Meinsma our heartful thanks. I wish it should so happen now that many of the readers, coming from the utmost outside, may penetrate into the core of our subject; but the book is fit to further also those who are already on the right track. Indeed, we cannot let pass by before our mind's eye all those lively images without being revisited and strengthened by soul-awakening thoughts. We become aware that also in those days, as always and everywhere, those who were persecuted and despised by the ruling culture stood on a higher level than their persecutors and despisers, so high that they sacrificed the advantages of life, and even life itself, rather than give up their convictions; an attack on their ideas meant for them menacing something much more valuable than their lives as men. We are reminded that suffering for the sake of Truth meant not a misfortune, since only a false belief, a superstition, is a misfortune—such was and is the firm conviction, rooted in the deep awareness of eternity, of all the heroes of the spirit, of the Espritals, of all the noble champions and militants. We consider these fighters under the circumstances of their days, and under the then existing restraints of the freedom of thought; and by comparison we feel not only relationship and kinship, but also the higher necessity which compels us to enter the self-same fight. We, too, have to liberate ourselves, as they did, and we must fight for our freedom; and, in fighting, we will try to win over to our side some enemies and some reluctant ones. We feel so fully the kinship with those fighters, that from their old scars our own blood starts flowing! With those and with all the other fighters for freedom we are entwined in one association, and we all serve the ONE CAUSE, and whatever each one does in particular on that behalf, is never wasted but integrates itself to the whole. With such ideas we follow the destinies of those men, and the more we advance in our reading, the more we feel the unmistakable proximity of the greatest one, who has lived for our Cause, and the more we feel our hearts filled with a renewed and loftier courage.

The life of Spinoza—

Pass over to this side all of you, fighters in this battle, ye Espritals—for you are the fighters against the powers of spiritlessness—ye Espritals, who feel the importance and the depth of life, and who experience by and in yourselves the marks of the Eternal at its foundation, those colossal marks of Art, Philosophy, and Love! Ye Esprital fighters, who at present and at all times pursue in your life and with your life one great mission of Truth; and who, in return, get your reward from mankind—pass over to this side and look at this life of Spinoza, which by itself is quite a clear manifestation of eternal Truth. Look at Spinoza when someday you feel humiliated and despondent. Remember the life of this man, how they treated him during his life; and how, after his death, at the very sound of

his name, for one hundred years, not only "the theologians used to spit," but all who knew how to spit, and not least the philosophers, too.20 Remember the anathema which was suspended over his life: "Cursed be he during the day and cursed be he during the night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he gets up; cursed when he goes out and cursed when he comes back. God will not forgive him....We decree that nobody communicate with him by word of mouth or by writing, that nobody do him any favor, that nobody remain with him under the same roof, or nearer then four yards from him and that nobody read writings composed or written by him." And that curse whereby he had been cast out from the community of outcasts influenced the whole human race: nobody, nobody wanted, nobody dared associate his name with the name of Spinoza, for he, too, would become thereby an object of general abomination. Three generations of educated people erected for Spinoza an unparalleled monument of stigmatisation, such as was never seen before, under which they believed to have buried forever his work and his memory.—"The anger and the wrath of God will flare up against that man and God will erase his name from under heaven and will reject him unto the Evil one." This is what God has done through his men, through his educated men. Hear it all of you, who have decided yourself for truth, to fight for it all your life, listen to the way the name of the truest of all messengers of truth has been annihilated and rejected to the evil one: They changed his name Benedictus into Maledictus; they called him the Cursed, the earth has never born a more cursed being, never a viler devil as this hell-hound barking from his three throats.—They said that his mind was obscured and that his temperament was by nature lazy, sly, and insidious!—They called him a skulking author; and, on the other hand, also shameless, brazen, crazy, arrogant, fanatically ambitious, who wanted to be torn into pieces in order to become world renowned, a lying boaster who was playing the jeerer of religion and has brought into the world all those ignominies only to make his name famous. According to others he was supposedly a very ignorant, apathetic and extremely stupid man, who was incapable of understanding the difference between one and many,—The poor rascal of a Cartesiano-cabalistic somnambulist, the cabalistic charlatan, the murderer and highwayman of Common sense and of Science.—His work is so careless that it makes you disgusted!—Everything in it is rough and undigested—wrong definitions: the sterile teacher with his superficial manners, his impudence and the worst errors of logic, paradoxes, absurdities, miseries! The Ethics, liber pestilentissimus, on account of which one has to cry shame on mankind, that such a work could have come out of it!—the miserable and immature product of an unfortunate and immature understanding—it advocates the most shocking and the most ridiculous of all hypotheses!—All that is galimatias, fiction and nonsense!—For at times he was not in his right mind!—The wretched Jew, the buffoon, the fool, who should have been put into a lunatic asylum—all he brings are the weakest and most pitiful caricatures and trifles, which shouldn't have been simply punished by admonitions, but by blows—and all his doctrines are plagiarism—the horrible doctrines which this tasteless Jewish philosopher, with your permission, has sh.. into the world!—The poisonous stinking doctrines—dunghills—the rather bestial than human heresies—that system of lies—and he himself the worst liar and hypocrite who wanted to play a decent person—a wicked sophist who, fully conscious of his malignant intentions, counterfeited in the most loathsome manner—a cunning impostor as it were (impostor nulli secundus, veterator turpissimus), a swindler thrice, four-times branded; a miserable, spiteful creature, a knave of knaves, a worthless villain,

an outcast of humanity, a loose bird, a libertine who through excess in eating and drinking and with women, contracted a phthistic consumption and finally departed in frenzy and in madness—it is reported that in his desperation he committed suicide—and even nowadays a deformed portrait of his is shown around by them, with the caption: "He carries the mark of rejection on his forehead."

Hear ye all this, ye messengers of truth, ye good militants, and remain inflexible and firm in this fight, and be even more confident and happier in your hearts than before; all this was to no purpose, all this infamy came to naught; but not a single word of truth remains fruitless! Thus you in turn may be besmirched during your lifetime and after your life and may lie a hundred years like dead hounds: all the storms and floods of destiny shall pass over your names, and then will come your own enemies and they shall be obliged to awaken your truth, so that it may live and henceforth live forever!

1We render "die Geistigen" by "the Espritals" and "Geistigkeit" by "Espritality," since our familiar corresponding English words, "spiritual" and "spirituality," carry with them some religious and ritual connotations which are contrary to Constantin Brunner's terminology.

2Has been followed up: the most recent original bird of this kind, Schopenhauer! who has also robbed everything else in his reach and who, indeed, is to be called a most genial thief.

3On the topic of the importance of philosophy and philosophers for poetry—but obviously not of Nietzsche nor of any cheap mysticism—let us quote the saying of Jean Paul; "Poets do not have the same influence as philosophers, who—I speak for myself—impart to the waves of ideas a longlasting impulse; I do not know of any more effective stimulant for the brain than philosophy; perhaps at best, coffee and chess." And the same Jean Paul writes to Jacobi: "On your question as to the earnestness behind my poetry, I answer: yours."

4Dalberg to Herder: "Spinoza and Christ, only in these two resides a true awareness of God."

5There is probably no need to state here that the God of Spinoza is different from the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Kant; following a notice in Jean de Clerc's Bibliothèque ancienne et moderne, Tome XXII, I, p. I35 the word God did not appear at all in the original version of the Ethics: "I have been told by a very dependable man (with a handwritten confirmation of the alleged facts) that Spinoza has composed his Ethics with demonstrations in Flemish and has given it to be translated into Latin by the medic named Louis Meyer and that the word God was not used in it at all, but only that of Nature, since he pretended it to be eternal. The medic warned that this omission would cause him great trouble for denying the existence of God and replacing Him by Nature, which last word serves more to indicate the creature than the Creator. Spinoza approved that change and the book was published as suggested by Meyer. In reading his book one sees easily that the word God figures there simply as an adventitious vocable in order to

suit the reader." I have given the complete quotation of the notice, although I do not consider it to be trustworthy in that form—same reaction to Stolle's notice Kurtze Anleitung zur Historie der Gelahrtheit, Halle 1718, II, 197, saying that Spinoza had later omitted a chapter "De Diabolo" originally part of the Ethics (where obviously is meant II.25 of the Short treatise upon God, Man etc. )—but I could mention some facts which make the supposition of the former notice not an outright invention. I will have occasion to speak about it in another connection, because here is not the right place to deal with it. But whatever might have happened then, whether Spinoza had only subsequently introduced the word God, or had used it right from the start, it is sufficiently clear that he understood by that word something entirely different from the God of religion, which point became evident to everybody. But what will not at all enter their evidence is this: that as his God is not identical with the God of religion, He is also not identical with Nature understood as the world of things. In other words, Spinoza's Nature is not identical with the Nature whereof speak our metaphysical empiricists. When they and Spinoza say Nature, it is only the same word but bearing two entirely different meanings. Spinoza has always thought what is thinkable and hence different from the theologians and from natural scientists. When he says Deus sive Natura he understands by that, in opposition to the God doted with an intelligence and a will, and, also in opposition to the nature of things or thinghood: Substance consisting in infinite attributes whereof each expresses the eternal and infinite Beingness.

From which definition therefore clearly results that Spinozism is as remote from pantheism or from natural-materialistic monism as Truth is remote from superstition. It is highly desirable that our natural philosophers, the materialistic monists, be finally willing to become aware of the difference between Spinozism and their own creed, since their brothers, the theologians, have already long ago established very clearly the difference between their creed and Spinozism. To us, both of them are on the same level, the superstitious adorers of a personal God (Ruler of the Universe) and the superstitious adorers of the Cosmos—even if the first believe in the unknown God and the second believe in the unknown world behind the world of appearances and of the phenomena of the Cosmos.

6It is sad and painful to see how even our great Neospinozists Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are far from abiding always by it and frequently try to show that they surpass Spinoza. In their times many people have shared that opinion with them, but nowadays nobody believes it any more; Spinozism stands firm and their systems withstood against it like foam against rock. They have not refuted Spinozism, neither have they outdone it. Wherein they believed themselves to outdo Spinoza, therein they were in fact lagging far behind him, and fell down from the heights of inspiration to platitude—or, as Fichte has shown to be the case (in his Beiträgen zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie) with Schelling and Hegel, that it is already found in Spinoza and only insofar different as it is there much more clearly expressed, so that one does best reverting to the original if one wishes to continue the reading. To understand how it was possible after Spinoza and his clearness to represent Spinozism so unclearly as done by those Neospinozists, and Hegel among them (that amazing man who occasionally was so admirably clear), one must pay due attention to the fact that they came from Kant's school.

This unclear representation explains also quite well the significant fact that Schopenhauer, whose stance with regard to Spinoza was similar to theirs (and to whose own ideas therefore applies what he criticized about their ideas and generally about the whole Postkantian philosophy: that it all was a distorted Spinozism), about the same ideas which he acknowledges as Spinoza's great accomplishments, and as even preparations to his own Schopenhauer-original-system, he vituperates against it as pure nonsense when he finds it with those other Spinozists, completely unaware that he is thus rejecting the part of Spinozism he had glorified for himself. Sometimes, of course, Schopenhauer rejects the whole of Spinozism, namely always when he asserts the Schopenhauerianism to be an original invention and the only truth. It is suspicious enough that precisely then he feels obliged to mention Spinoza. And exactly so goes it with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. They cannot state their own system otherwise than in opposition to Spinoza; also for Fichte, who was paid back by Schelling (cf. his Ferneren Darstellungen aus dem Systeme der Philosophie), judging Spinoza's conception of the Absolute much superior to Fichte's—but Fichte betrays himself also. He says indeed that there exist only two consistent systems, Spinoza's and the critical, which is his own. We find the same phenomenon already with Leibnitz who said that there is no other escape from Spinozism than his New System. "If there weren't Monads, Spinoza would be right." Everywhere the same sequence: from their natural and fair dependence on Spinoza, to the vanity and nonsense of their original-systems. Their relationship to Spinoza resembles that between Zeus and the other gods: All the gods and goddesses may suspend themselves on the golden chain that Zeus lowers from the sky, they will never succeed in pulling him down. "But if it pleased me now to pull in my turn, I would lift you all, even with the Earth and the Sea!"

7But I would like not to be misunderstood, as if I despised the philosophers. He who has read my Doctrine knows that I consider Heraclitus and Plato close to Spinoza; and knows also how sincere is my admiration and love for all true philosophers i.e., for those in whose philosophy a chief concern with thinking is the essential thing. I do separate them however from the amateurs-philosophants, if I may say so, in the same way as one should distinguish between musicians and amateurs-musicians, between physical scientists and the amateurs-physicists. I say one should, for nowadays one knows very little of such distinctions, or of similar ones. The era of an ever-more-all-around education becomes that of an ever worsening dilettantism, and since long ago amateurish philosophers, scientists and musicians are given among us the same consideration as any true philosopher, scientist or musician.

8So far, that even the name "morals", "morality" or similar doesn’t appear in it at all: very instructive is also the fact that in Spinoza's terminology certain words or concepts, or rather misconceptions, never appear. As for his golden silence about Space and Time cf., my Doctrine, Prolegomena, p.156.[or p. 174 in the 3rd edition].

9There are few subjects as important to be written about as about the know-how of reading. For, what is more important to the writer than his reader? And how many readers do we have today? Today, less than ever before, since our all-around education is so

advanced that everybody, the public as a whole, is writing. This is a great calamity: Our public writes instead of reading. All the authentic and genuine readers, who could and should be reading, are writing instead; and hence cease to be readers: for their taste is henceforth tuned-in on the mannerism of their contemporary writings, whereto they contribute or would like to contribute; and so exhibit a complete absence of any interest for something else, outside the narrow-mindedness, the Philistinism or, as I see it, the suburbanite's mystico-poetico-psycholunatic commuter literature, in these first generations in the era of our new superstition of evolutionism.

And our voracious readers? They do not count as readers for us! Gluttony in reading proves indifference to Goodness and to Truth. About that mania of voracious reading, which is a variety of laziness, that primary vice of the "modern man," as well as about the true purpose of books and of reading which nowadays seems totally forgotten, one will find some useful indications in my Doctrine (pages 1104-1121). On the other hand, one should not miss—especially those who are not satisfied with my present arguments—they should not omit to learn what Fichte, dead already for quite a while, had to say about it in his sixth lecture on "Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters". Fichte himself complains in the preface to a later work :"I, for my part, after witnessing the infinite confusion which follows each vigorous initiative, and the kind of thanks that are invariably paid to anyone who strives for the right things, I have lost confidence in the great public to such a degree that I wonder how to talk to them through the printing press." What Fichte said in the above-mentioned lecture about the right way one should read a book was neither taken into consideration in his time, nor thereafter, so much so that to almost all readers it will mean something entirely new—and new things they are always eager to read. And let us not forget: what is addressed to all readers is also meant for the attention of literary critics, who should have cared in the first place for correct reading patterns—because of the tutelary reading which they have to provide.

But strange to say, the current practice of our literary critics is today still the same as was described by Fichte; and exactly as he had asserted it: their critique of really important works still happens to be the most preposterous, and usually they degrade important works to the same extent that they extol and eulogize the unimportant ones, which brings to my mind Jonathan Swift's remark: that usually one tends to draw the elephants smaller and the fleas larger than they really are.... In becoming aware of that current practice of the literary critics, one may wonder (since it could not be explained otherwise) if perhaps even they haven't read as yet what Fichte says about correct reading; and hence that they, too, could find therein something new and totally unexpected—and, in addition, so useful to them, if not indispensable. In the present case—if in order to review this book, they happen to read it as well as this notice—they will certainly not hesitate even a second to get that lecture; and so they will have learned how to proceed and will most certainly apply it even in the rare case of a really important work.

And although concerning reading such a work, Fichte is giving them an instruction (I do not say what kind of instruction) that at first may seem to them puzzling and incomprehensible—(privatissime: Fichte suggests to peruse first the whole book in order to get an idea about the author's purpose. Then one should try to understand clearly the

main propositions "so as to make vanish the zone of uncertainty and obscurity to the point where the whole system of ideas of the author is clearly and distinctly understood")—in complying with that instruction our literary critics could very well take a little longer to make up their judgment, but such a delay will not be in any way detrimental to themselves nor to the really important work in question; for the work will not be harmed in the least if one or the other of our literary critics—in honesty and out of knowledge of himself, which can be useful even to a critic—should abstain from any comments—even if, for once, master cock doesn't crow, the sun will rise as usual....

As a matter of fact, the truly important works are independent of the judgment of the ages, and it is absolutely impossible that their importance and their proper character come to light immediately at the time of their appearance. The fate of all important creations of the past corroborates that truth; and Fichte, who was vividly aware of it, says on that score: "You should know that a work worthy of appearing will never find a judge at its appearance; it has to educate first its own public and form its own tribunal... The fact that after its publication a book has found immediately its competent judge proves the point that such a book could have just as well remained unwritten." But let no bungler gather hope therefrom for some future recognition, if in his own time nothing shows him any opposition: a great effect generally follows pretty soon from a genuine personality, but the point of view of the public opinion on its behalf is not the correct one most of the time, and therefore must later on turn to its opposite. A man of the eminent importance of Spinoza has quickly enough attracted the public attention, but more than a century was to pass before he found readers recognizing and proclaiming his true importance; neither was a man of the eminent importance of a Kant to remain longtime without recognition, but also in his case more than hundred years were to pass before we started reading him as he had to be read, in order to determine the place he deserves.

Good reading is as difficult and as rare as good writing; that's why the quality of the writer is a function of that of the reader, and to all excellent works applies the saying: "It is published and it isn't." To the highest degree this applies to the fate of the Ethics. To somebody who is not of the Esprital kind it remains eternally not published, even if one is as intelligent as the most intelligent, as Immanuel Kant, who did confess (to Hamann) that he "has never been able to find a meaning in Spinoza's system." But in order to show the meaning he finally found in it, after having witnessed what he would have preferred never to see—how more and more people came who found there a meaning—I propose to our experts two tasty samples, one from Kant's Critique of Judgement #73, the other from Beck's Digest of the original Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (über Philosophic überhaupt, Hartenstein, tome VI.); whereby our experts will have a good occasion—provided they still remember Spinoza over the report about him—to compare Spinoza's style with Kant's style in philosophizing (and not of his style as an essayist which has many merits). I do not speak here at all about the merits of Kant but only about his philosophy. When it comes to philosophising, Kant's style is very obscure, to say the least,—(For that reason, pretty soon doubts began to rise in my mind, when I still believed that I had to swear by Kant and did perceive there only a vague twinkle in the night; since, usually, Truth provides her messengers with better resources and hardly sends somebody afflicted with such a malady of language, with a language marred

through and through by that rash of barbarisms!) Spinoza's philosophical style on the contrary is something more than simply clear. It is in its form and in its expression the style of absolute objectivity; but despite all its rigidity and strictness and inexorability, one finds there such a vivid greatness, such a profound and passionate enthusiasm and music, that many persons, men as women, whose Esprital awareness resides mainly in the realm of Art, are nevertheless able to follow him. I will revert later on to Spinoza's style with some more details; but here I shall tell of a dream where I saw the Ethics illustrated i.e., the ideas of the Ethics appeared to me, the happiest of all mortals, in images: indescribably marvelous, strange and luminous images and during all that shifting vision from one image to the next the connexity of the whole remained untroubled, and I found it so delightful as perhaps never before in my clearest state of mind. After awakening, but before regaining my spirits, I fell again asleep and saw a broad street crowded with midgets, at their head a giant midget, a sort of king, with a crown on his tiny head and carrying sweatily a huge book with seven seals on it whereof the largest was Boredom. I do not remember anymore exactly the names of the other seals, but rethinking the dream in my memory, I would say that they were the following: lack of design of the whole and brutal caprice in the distribution of the parts and in the arranging of ideas—ghastly deformity and dissonance in sentence construction—dryness and tastelessness in the mother tongue with a bombastic abuse of barbarisms—heartless frigidity and embarrassment—prolixity—obscurity & ambiguity & unintelligibility. For I think that these seals are to represent somehow the seven deadly sins of style; and, the book which has frightened me by its exemplified combination of those seven, should have been one of Immanuel Kant, probably the one he named "Critique of Pure Reason," an unthinkable title to any thinking being.

10All the indications given here find their justification in my Doctrine of The Espritals and the Folk; here we do not philosophize.

11The influence exerted by Kant and his jargon on our language could not be judged disastrous enough—on the splendid German language—which in the past has already shown its flexibility for expressing philosophical ideas, and which, without Kant's interference, would have become a perfect medium of communication for modern intellectuals. Its sensitive force and solidity had already been recognized by Leibnitz who states with praise: " that it can say only honest things and doesn't even have a name for weird vagaries. That's why I glorify it to the Italians and French: We Germans have a strange affinity for ideas, unknown to other nations; and when they try to know what it is, I tell them that it is our language itself, for whatever can he said in it in an intelligible way without using any imported or obsolete words, is really something honest; but empty words with nothing behind them, like bubbles of idle thoughts, are not accepted by our pure German language." Indeed, and that's why Kant had to depart so far from the pure German language; and that's why, unfortunately, our scientific terminology has suffered a heavy and lasting setback.

12What follows could signify many things to many people, so that some might be inclined to stigmatize it with the label "mysticism". But how do not sound many things to many

people, and what do they understand by and about mysticism?! Many a one said long ago that Spinoza's system turns completely into mysticism at the end of the Ethics. I cannot express myself here with the necessary clarity, except to say that a mysticism in the common, usual sense, as it impinges upon even the uncommon sense, is completely absent from Spinoza, since everything he says comes rather out as the clearest evidence. He who is capable of it should follow what I have called the golden rule for reading Spinoza: that he keep constantly in mind. for each term the definition given by Spinoza, so as to avoid all confusion due to the homonymy of the Esprital meanings and the Folk's customary terms. He who follows that rule and also takes care not to commit the worst of sins against the clearest of all thinkers, namely in imputing to Him our own fictitious ideas, he will find also at the end of the Ethics only the clearest and really thinkable ideas. Spinoza took pains to be clear as no other writer, and has achieved clarity as no other human being. To anyone who reads him as he justly demands to be read, Spinoza is the most understandable of all writers, provided of course that the reader possesses the ability to understand some unequivocal words used each time with the same unequivocal meaning. He who, nevertheless, because of the word "immortality" found at the end of the Ethics, still understands it as if Spinoza expected immortality after death—an immortal life after death, expected by the same Spinoza who was eternal in his life?! "An immortal life after death", that clumsy, cheap absolutification of the relative "I "—he who still understands like that at the end, should not have started reading the Ethics in the first place.

13This anathema explains also the fact that there wasn't a single Jew among his friends. But would one have believed it possible that the blind hatred against Spinoza is still present [written in 1909] in the lower strata of the Jewish population in Holland? A monument to his memory has been erected in The Hague and there one sees "on the thinker's lap, at his feet and inside the iron fence bricks as thick as a fist," and, as to the origin of these philosopher's stones, one is told that they come from the local Jews.

14As is well known, the Stoics are in no position to mention even a single example of a man who might have met their ideal of a Sage;—Spinoza could have served as such an example.

15Once he had the intention to give it to the world, but his world rejected it, and even his best friends (who expected great things from him, great in their fashion, as long as they knew nothing from him, because they knew not his greatness, nor could have known it) proved themselves petty, unreliable, timid, and occasionally hostile.

16As for Kant's style cf., "The Interlude of Immanuel Kant" in my Doctrine I, p.414 ff. Kant utterly lacks that combination of enthusiasm and solemnity which can never be absent from a genuine philosopher.

17Jacobi's book, even though it knows only a part of Spinoza's doctrine, i.e., his naturalism or materialism, the doctrine of relative reality, must be called the best and most profound book about Spinoza. Having penetrated deeply into that doctrine of the relative reality, Jacobi recognizes amazingly well its importance, in identifying it with the

human understanding. But Spinoza's doctrine of the Spirit, or of absolute reality, Jacobi was incapable of grasping; and he finds nothing and sees nothing of it in the Ethics. He is an enemy of Spinozism, which, as I have said, he identifies with the practical understanding; and because he is an enemy of the Common Sense, whereto he opposes what he calls reason (Vernunft). That "reason" of Jacobi—which however cannot be apprehended and which even has to be denied, negated, by our common sense, and yet in which one has to believe—well that "reason" ( exactly as by Kant who likewise opposes it to the understanding and calls it by comparison "the higher intellectual power") is absolutely identical with traditional superstition. For, in his eyes, Reason-Vernunft is identical with one's feelings or faith; that's why one speaks also of Jacobi's "philosophy of the feelings or of the faith," the content whereof is precisely the superstition of his time. Jacobi was firm in that superstition and remained firm in it up to his very end. One may read the preface to the fourth volume of his works, probably his last confession to God, Liberty and Immortality; and very clearly to God as the intelligent Originator, Mover and Ruler of the World, the personal God. Hence, what else is to be left there than to invoke the pious Kant as his attested witness: "Under the concept of God one does not understand simply a blindly acting Nature as the root of things, but the highest Being which in its Understanding and Liberty has to be the Originator of all things, and this concept of a living God is the only one we are interested in," says Kant (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, 660,661); "I couldn't have thought differently on that subject," adds Jacobi in his candor—neither could have Kant. And I do not assert anything else than that they could not have thought it differently! In that they admit it themselves, everything has been conceded to me in my assertion about them, namely: that they have to think superstition and that they cannot think the Truth. As for Kant's piety which is not shown in our colleges, one may examine it in my "The Interlude of Immanuel Kant".

18From the Greek diaskeua-zomai: he-who-disposes-of (everything? like mass-killers?)

19In comparing that translation with the original text—and I was able to do it without outside help, and without any previous knowledge of Dutch, so easy is that language to be learned by us Germans—I got an excellent impression of the Dutch language. For our German ears it sounds of course not pleasant at all in the beginning (despite the circumstance that, following Gropius, it was spoken in Paradise); but I found to my joy and to my sorrow, that even today that Dutch, a close relative of ours, is so much better off than German in expressing things with force and vigor. Meinsma uses in his work popular sentences which could hardly come to the minds of our scholars with their mania for vagueness and with their jargon "of empty words with nothing behind them, like bubbles of idle thoughts." The Dutch language has evidently still the old uprightness. As for the Dutch translation of the works of Kant which, as I was told, shall soon appear as a friendly reciprocal gesture for the German translations of Spinoza, I don’t think that the genius of the Dutch language will be happy with it. Concerning the pictures added to the German translation of Meinsma's work, they have been forwarded to me by Ernst Altkirch and are part of his diligent and thorough work, Spinoza in portrait. About one of these portraits, a youth portrait, recently discovered, cf., Wetermanns Monatshefte,1909.

20Among the sayings quoted verbatim hereafter in the text, some and not the most tender are from Thomasius, Pufendorf, Leibnitz (from the older Leibnitz who, with his poor and distorted piece of Spinozism posing as an Originalphilosopher, took the field against Spinozism), Hamann, Herbart; and even Schopenhauer, who does not undervalue the historical importance of Spinoza, and who often speaks with great admiration about him, speaks also occasionally about the ravings of Spinoza and gladly strikes the Jew. These sayings have been simply put by myself in a gamut, so as to be sung in a convenient way; myself, I sang them to my greatest advantage everyday as my morning prayer, till now when I do not need to pray anymore.