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Such was Benedict Spinoza — thus he lived and thought. A brave and simple man, earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation — a system that has been decried, for nearly two centuries, as the most iniquitous and blasphemous of human invention ; and which has now, within the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole nation's philosophy, ranking among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious intellects of the age. The ribald Atheist turns out, on nearer acquaintance, to be a "God-intoxicated man." The blasphemous Jew becomes a pious, virtuous, and creative thinker. The dissolute heretic becomes a child-like, simple, self-denying and heroic man. We look into his works with calm earnestness, and read there another curious page of human history : the majestic struggle with the mysteries of existence has failed, as it always must fail ; but the struggle demands our warmest admiration, and the man our ardent sympathy. Spinoza stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve to warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which hundreds of their brethren have perished. (en) |
