Chapter 22 21. Spinoza

One of the things in history that I've never been able to figure out is the workload of some of the artists and literati of the past. Members of the modern writing guild have typewriters, tape recorders, secretaries and fountain pens, and can write three to four thousand words a day.How could Shakespeare write thirty-seven plays when he was distracted by a dozen jobs, had a wretched wife, and a poor dip pen? Where did Rope de Vega, veteran of the "Armada" get the ink and paper necessary to write eighteen hundred comedies and five hundred essays after a busy life? And what was that strange Johann Sebastian Bach like?With twenty noisy children in his cabin, he had time to compose five oratorios, one hundred and ninety church choruses, three wedding choruses, twelve hymns, six solemn masses, three Violin concertos (one concerto for two violins alone is enough to immortalize his name in history), seven piano concertos, three concertos for two pianos, two concertos for three pianos, thirty orchestral scores, and Wrote pieces for flute, harp, organ, violin, and French horn, which are enough for ordinary students to practice for a lifetime.

Also, how did Rembrandt and Rubens work so hard when they produced four paintings or four etchings almost every month for thirty years?How did the humble commoner Antonio Stradivari build five hundred and forty violins, fifty cellos, and twelve violas in his lifetime? I am not now discussing how their minds could conceive all the plots, hear all the melodies, see all the combinations of colors and lines, choose all the woods.I'm just on the weird physical side.How can they do it?don't they sleep?Don't they play pool for hours too?Are they never tired?Have they heard of this thing called "nerves"?

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of such people.They disregard the laws of health, eat and drink noxious things, and are ignorant of the noble calling of being a member of the honorable human race, but they have plenty of time, and their artistic wit is terrific. The same is true of the arts and sciences in elaborate and elaborate theology. If you had gone to a library two hundred years ago, you would have found the ceiling and the attic filled with religious tracts, sermons, discussions, refutations, abstracts, and commentaries in octavo, twelve, and eighteen, Framed in leather, parchment, and paper, dusty and forgotten.But these books contain extensive and useless learning.

The topics discussed and many words used in it have lost their meaning in the eyes of modern people.But these musty compilations serve an important purpose.If they accomplish nothing, they at least clean the air, for they either solve the problems under discussion, satisfying those concerned, or convince the reader that those problems are beyond the reach of logical reasoning and debate, and are simply dropped somewhere. It sounded like a sarcastic compliment.But I hope that the critics of the thirtieth century to come will be just as merciful as they gnaw at what remains of our literary and scientific achievements.

Baruch de Spinoza, the protagonist of this chapter, did not follow the fashion of his time quantitatively.His complete works consisted of only three or four little notebooks and a few bundles of letters. But the amount of study necessary to solve abstract problems in his ethics and philosophy with the correct mathematical methods would overwhelm the average healthy person.It was for this reason that the poor tuberculosis patient died, trying to understand God by means of the multiplication table. Spinoza was Jewish.But the Jews at that time had not yet been insulted by the ghetto.When their ancestors settled in the Spanish peninsula, it was a province inhabited by the Moors.After the Spanish conquest, the policy of "Spain belongs to the Spaniards" was introduced, which finally led to the collapse of the country. The Spinoza family was forced to leave their hometown. They traveled to the Netherlands by water, bought a house in Amsterdam, worked hard, and saved money. Money, who soon became famous and became a member of the most respected family of "Portuguese immigrants".

If their son Baruch was aware of their Jewish ancestry, apart from the ridicule of the neighbor children, it was more due to the training he received in the Talmud School.As the Dutch Republic was suffocated by class prejudices and had little time for racial prejudices, foreign peoples could find refuge on the shores of the North Sea and the Zuiderzee and live in peace and harmony.This is one of the great features of Dutch life, and with good reason the modern traveler never forgets it when he writes his travelogue. In most of the rest of Europe, relations between Jews and non-Jews were far from ideal, even at a relatively late age.The quarrel between the two was almost hopeless, because both were right and wrong, and both were, so to speak, victims of the other's tyranny and prejudice.It has been said in this book that tolerance is a method of self-preservation. According to this theory, it is obvious that as long as Christians and Jews are loyal to their respective religions, they will regard each other as enemies.First of all, both sides insist that what they believe in is the only true God, and other gods of other nations are all false.Second, the two parties are dangerous business rivals.The Jews came to Western Europe as they first came to Palestine, immigrants looking for a new homeland.The trade unions of the time, or "guilds," would not let them find employment, so they willingly opened pawnshops and banks as an economic expedient.These two trades were very similar in the Middle Ages, and in people's eyes, decent people would not do this trade.It is incomprehensible that the church, up to the time of Calvin, had a deep aversion to money (except taxes) and considered it a sin to take interest.Of course, no government tolerates usury, and forty centuries ago the Babylonians passed a draconian law against money dealers who tried to profit off other people's money.We read from the chapters of the Old, written two thousand years ago, that Moses strongly forbade his followers to lend money at high interest to others, except to foreigners.Later, great Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato, expressed their disapproval of generating money from other people's money.Church priests have a more definite attitude towards such matters.Throughout the Middle Ages, moneylenders were looked down upon.Dante has a special niche in hell for his financial friends.

It can be theoretically shown that pawnshops and banks are undesirable citizens, and the world would be better off without them.However, as long as the world is no longer all agricultural, even the most ordinary business cannot be done without the help of credit.So the moneylender was the devil everyone needed (according to the Christian view), and the doomed Jew was forced to work in a business that was needed but respectable people would never bother. Thus the unfortunate exiles were forced into dishonorable employments, which made them natural enemies of rich and poor.Once they had made their fortunes, they turned against convenience, vilified them, locked them up in the dirtiest quarters of the city, and hanged them on impulse as heathen thugs or burned them as traitors to Christ.

How stupid and ignorant.The endless attacks and persecutions did not make the Jews like the Christians.The immediate result was that a great number of first-rate minds withdrew from public intercourse, and thousands of naturally bright young men, who might have advanced in business and science, squandered their brains and energy in the useless study of those esoteric subjects. Millions of dispossessed young men and women are doomed to a monstrous life in stinking huts, in old books of quizzical conundrums and fastidious sophistry, while listening to old men telling them that they are sure to inherit the earth and all its riches God's chosen ones, and they are terrified out of their wits by hearing others keep calling them pigs, worthy only of the gallows or the chariot.

It is impossible for someone (whoever he is) to keep looking at life in the light of such adversity. Time and time again, the Jews were driven to act insanely against their fellow Christians, and when they rose up against their oppressors, they were called "traitors" and "unrepaying scoundrels" and were subjected to even more severe insults and restrictions.But this restriction had only one effect: it multiplied the resentful Jews, demoralized others, and made the ghetto a terrible abode for frustrated ambition and accumulated hatred. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, and was thus fortunately spared the miseries that most of his relatives were born with.He was sent first to the school run by the synagogue (properly called the "Tree of Life"), and having learned the Hebrew conjugations, he was sent to the learned Francisco Appinius van den With Dr. Ender, studying Latin and Science.

Dr. Francisco, as his name suggests, came from a Catholic family.He was rumored to be a graduate of the University of Louvain, a Jesuit in disguise, and, according to the most extensive deacon in the city, a dangerous man.But this is nonsense.Van den Ende did spend a few years in Catholic school in his youth, but he was absent-minded about his lessons.After leaving his native Antwerp, he came to Amsterdam and opened a private school by himself. He has excellent discriminating ability and is good at finding ways to make students like ancient literature. The Calvinist free people of Amsterdam are willing to entrust their children to him regardless of his past relationship with Catholicism, and are very proud that because the children of this school are in the sixth grade. Rhyme and declension are always better than other schools.

Van den End taught young Baruch Latin, but his enthusiasm for the latest discoveries in science and his admiration for Giordano Bruno undoubtedly taught the boy something that Orthodox Jewish families should not normally mention. and things. Contrary to the habit of the time, Spinoza did not live with other students, but lived at home.His profound knowledge amazed his family. Relatives proudly called him Mr. Xiao and gave him pocket money without hesitation.Instead of wasting the money on tobacco, he bought philosophy books. There was one author who most interested him. This is Descartes. Rene Descartes was a French nobleman born on the border of Tours and Boitiers, where Charlemagne's grandfather had blocked Mohammed from conquering Europe.He was sent to the Jesuits before he was ten years old, and he stayed there for twelve years. It was very annoying, because he was willing to think and refused to accept things without proof.The Jesuits were perhaps the only ones in the world who could manage such recalcitrant children without bruising them and yet successfully trained them.To test the pudding is to eat it.The same goes for education.If modern educators had learned the method of the Jesuit Brothers of Loyola, we would have a few Descartes of our own. Descartes began his military service at the age of twenty, and went to Holland, where Maurice of Nassau had perfected his military system, making his army a training school for young men aspiring to become generals.Descartes did not often go to Prince Nassau's headquarters.How could a devout Catholic be the servant of a Protestant chief!That sounds like treason.But Descartes was interested in mathematics and artillery, not religion and politics.He resigned his post shortly after the truce between Holland and Spain, and went to Munich to fight under the Catholic duke of Bavaria. But that war was short, and the only battle of any importance was fought near La Rochelle, when the Huguenots were defending against Richelieu.Descartes returned to France and wanted to learn a little advanced battle.But camp life bored him.He decided to bid farewell to his military career and devote himself to philosophy and science. He has a small income of his own.He didn't want to get married, and he had few extravagant wishes. He just wanted to live a quiet and happy life, and he got his wish. I don't know why he chose Holland as his place of residence.But in a country full of printers, publishers, and bookstores, the laws of censorship are useless as long as the government and religion are not openly attacked.Besides, he never learned the language of the country to which he had immigrated (which is not difficult for a real Frenchman), so he avoided unnecessary company and useless conversation, and was able to spend all his time (almost every day) twenty hours) to use on their own work. For those who have served in the military, this kind of life is too boring.But Descartes had a purpose in life and was content with this self-torturing exile.As time went by, he came to believe that the world is still shrouded in unfathomable ignorance, that what is called "science" is not even close to real science, and that the old mistakes and absurdities are not wiped out first. progress cannot be achieved.This is no small proposition.But Descartes was very patient, and at the age of thirty, he began to dedicate to us a brand-new philosophical system.Inspired by his own work, he added geometry, astronomy, and physics to his initial outlines.His impartiality at work led Catholics to declare him a Calvinist, and Calvinists to call him an atheist. These noises reached his ears and did not bother him at all.He calmly continued his exploration, discussed philosophy with the Queen of Sweden in Stockholm, and finally died peacefully in the city. Among the people of the seventeenth century, Cartesianism, like Darwinism in Victorian times, caused a great stir.It was a terrible thing to be a Cartesian in 1680, very disgraceful.It shows that someone is an enemy of the social system, a Socinian, an inferior who does not think he can keep company with respectable people.This has not stopped much of the intelligentsia from embracing Cartesianism as eagerly as our predecessors embraced Darwinism.But among Orthodox Jews in Amsterdam, such topics were not mentioned.In Talmud and Tollach no one cares about Cartesianism, so it does not exist.As soon as it was shown to exist in the mind of Baruch de Spinoza, it was doomed, and as soon as the authorities of the synagogue came forward to investigate the matter and take official action, Spinoza would likewise cease to exist. . At that time the synagogue in Amsterdam had just come through a serious crisis.When Baruch Jr. was fifteen, a Portuguese exile named Uriel Icosta came.He resolutely abandoned Catholicism, which he was forced to accept under threat of death, and returned to the religion of his predecessors.But this Icosta was no ordinary Jew, but a gentleman with a feather in his hat and a sword at his side.He was amazed and annoyed by the arrogance displayed by the Dutch rabbis who had been trained in German and Polish schools.He was also very proud, and he never bothered to hide his opinions. Such open contempt could not have been tolerated in that small social organization.A life-and-death struggle begins between the lofty dreamer, half-prophet, half-noble, and the ruthless defender of the law. The ending is tragic. First, at the local police station, Icosta was accused of being the author of several sacrilegious pamphlets denying the immortality of the soul.This put him at odds with the Calvinist clergy.But the facts were soon clarified and the charges dropped.The synagogue then excommunicated the stubborn rebel and deprived him of a means of earning a living. For the next few months the poor man wandered the streets of Amsterdam, until poverty and loneliness drove him back to the church.But he must first confess his guilt in public and let all the Jews whip and kick him before he can be approved to re-join the association.The insult drove him insane.He bought a pistol and opened his own head. The suicide incident caused a lot of discussion among the citizens of Amsterdam.The Jewish community felt that it could not risk another storm.When the most promising pupils of the "tree of life" were undoubtedly tainted by Cartesian neo-heretical ideas, the synagogues sprang into action to try to cover them up.People talked to Babuck and offered him an annuity if he promised to obey, go to synagogue, and never say or spread anything against the law. Spinoza hated compromise the most, and rejected such things in a few words.As a result, he was excommunicated according to the famous old Code of Punishment.That rule leaves no room for thought, and is full of curses and invectives copied from the days of Jericho. Faced with all kinds of cursing, he sat in the house calmly and learned about what happened the day before from the newspaper.Even when a Code zealot wanted to take his life, he refused to leave the city. It was a severe blow to the prestige of the rabbis, who, despite their invocations to Joshua and Elisha, were again openly challenged within a few years.They frantically sued the City Hall to meet the mayor and tell him that Baruch de Spinoza, who had just been excommunicated, was indeed a dangerous, agnostic, godless man in Amsterdam. Such people should not be tolerated in such a respectable Christian community. Those high-ranking officials have a good habit of not interfering in everything, but pushing it to the subcommittee of Christian pastors.After this subcommittee study.Finding that Spinoza did not do anything harmful to the city law, he reported the truth to the city government officials.However, they felt that it was a good thing for the people of a sect to be so united, so they suggested to the mayor that this young man who seemed to be very independent should leave Amsterdam for a few months and come back after the limelight passed. Since then, Spinoza's life has been as smooth as the land he saw from the window.He left Amsterdam and rented a house in the small village of Rheinsberg near Leiden, where he sharpened the lenses of optical instruments during the day, smoked his pipe at night, and read or wrote according to his whims.He has never been married.There were rumors of an affair with the daughter of the Latin teacher van den Ende, but the child was only ten when Spinoza left Amsterdam, so it was unlikely. He had several close friends who at least twice a year offered him a small favor so that he could devote his full time to research.He replied that he appreciated their kindness, but that he preferred to be independent, to ask for no more than eighty dollars a year from a wealthy Cartesian, and to live as a true philosopher should. among the respected poor. He once had the opportunity to be a professor in Germany, but he declined.The famous King of Prussia wrote to him, willing to be his patron and protector. He also gave a negative answer and continued to live a peaceful and happy life in exile. After living in Rheinsberg for several years, he moved to The Hague.He has been in poor health, and the glass foam on the half-finished lens has infected his lungs. In 1677 he died alone and alone. To the indignation of the local priest, no fewer than six private carriages of the royal family accompanied the "atheist" to the cemetery.Two hundred years later, when the statue in his honor was dedicated, the hapless police had to be out in large numbers to protect the attendees of this solemn ceremony from the wrath of hordes of fanatical Calvinists. This is him, what influence does he have?Is he just an industrious philosopher who stuffs endless theories into stacks of books and uses language that would make Omar Khayyam blue with rage? No. What he achieved was by no means the use of his wits or the correct formulation of his theories with eloquence.His greatness is mainly due to his courage.He belonged to those who know only one law, an unalterable set of rules laid down in distant dark ages long forgotten, for professional priests who pretended to explain the divine truth. spiritual tyranny system. He lived in a world where the idea of ​​intellectual freedom was almost synonymous with political anarchy. He knew that his system of logic would offend both Jews and non-Jews. But he never wavered. He sees all problems as universal, without exception, as manifestations of an all-pervasive will, manifestations of pure reality, which will apply to Judgment Day as they apply to Genesis. In this way, he made a great contribution to the cause of human tolerance. Spinoza, like Descartes before him, abandoned the narrow boundaries set by the old religion, and established his own brand-new ideological system with millions of stars as the cornerstone. In doing so, he restores the true image of man—as a true member of the world—that has been distorted from Greek and Roman times.