At first Rosomond did not
comprehend
it.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v23 - Sha to Sta
Accordingly, wherever
there is matter there is mind, and vice versa. That this last fact es-
capes us ordinarily is due to the limitation of our natures. Our minds
## p. 13792 (#626) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13792
are part of the Divine Thought, just as our bodies are part of the
Divine Extension. But we know directly only so much of mind as
corresponds to our own bodily processes, viewed in their linkage and
in their unity. Hence other bodies seem to us inanimate. As a fact,
matter and mind are parallel and coextensive throughout the uni-
verse. On the other hand, although perfectly correspondent, insepa-
rable, and parallel (for each is in its own way an expression of
precisely the same Divine truth which the other expresses), matter
and mind, close companions as they are, never causally affect each
other; but each is determined solely by its own inner laws. Ideas
cause ideas; bodies move bodies: but bodies never produce mental
states, nor do thoughts issue in physical movements, even in case of
our own bodies and minds. The appearance which makes this seem
true, when our mind and bodies appear to interact, is due to the prin-
ciple that "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the
order and connection of things," owing precisely to the parallelism of
the attributes. Hence just when a given physical state takes place
in our bodies, the parallel idea, by virtue of the laws of mind, is sure
to arise in our consciousness.
This theory of the independence and parallelism of mind and body
has played, as we have said, a great part in more recent discussion;
and survives, as the doctrine of the "psycho-physical parallelism," in
modern scientific discussions which are far removed in many respects
from Spinoza's metaphysics.
The practical consequences of the system of Spinoza are worked
out by the author in the later divisions of his 'Ethics,' in a manner
which has become classic; although, as pointed out above, Spinoza's
distinctive historical influence is due rather to his general theories.
But as one way of telling the ancient tale of the wise man's life in
God, the practical interpretation which Spinoza gives to monism may
well stand beside the other classics of Stoical and of mystical lore.
Since there is naught but God, and since in God there is fulfilled, in
an impersonal but none the less perfect way, all that our thought
aims to know, and all that even our blind passions mistakenly strive
to attain, the wise man, according to Spinoza, enjoys an absolute
" acquiescence" in whatever the infinite wisdom produces. God is
absolute, and can lack nothing; hence apparent evil is a merely nega-
tive "deprivation » of good, a deprivation itself due only to our in-
adequate view,-i. e. , only to error. Evil is, then, nothing positive.
And the wise man, seeing all things in God, loves God with a love
that is identical with God's love of his own perfection. For God, if
not conscious in our fleeting way, has still the fulfillment of all that
consciousness means, in the very perfection of his thinking attribute;
so that our thoughts are God's very thoughts precisely in so far as
## p. 13793 (#627) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13793
our thoughts are rational, complete, adequate, true. In other words,
in so far as we are wise, we directly enter into the perfection of God
himself.
Since thoughts of a very similar type have received a frequent
expression in writings reputed orthodox, it is not surprising that
many who easily fear the name pantheism have still been ready to
reverence, in Spinoza, the spirit, profound if inadequate, which in
such fashion embodies, in our philosopher's work, one of the most
universal motives of piety.
Josiah Royce.
THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING
FTER had taught me that all the usual surround-
Aings of social life are vain and futile,-seeing that none of
the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything
either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by
them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be
some real good having power to communicate itself, which would
affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in
fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attain-
ment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending
happiness. I say "I finally resolved"; for at first sight it seemed
unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of
something then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are
acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged
to abandon the quest of such objects if I seriously devoted my-
self to the search for something different and new. I perceived
that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former, I
should necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were
not so placed, and I gave them my whole attention, I should
equally fail.
I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive
at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its
existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my
life; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in vain.
For the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men
(as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed
XXIII-863
―
## p. 13794 (#628) ##########################################
13794
BENEDICT SPINOZA
under the three heads - Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of
Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little
power to reflect on any different good. By sensual pleasure the
mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme
good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of think-
ing of any other object: when such pleasure has been gratified it
is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though
not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled.
The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing,
especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake,
inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest
good. In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed; for
fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the
ultimate end to which all actions are directed. Further, the
attainment of riches and fame is not followed, as in the case of
sensual pleasures, by repentance: but the more we acquire the
greater is our delight, and consequently the more are we incited
to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if
our hopes happen to be frustrated, we are plunged into the deep-
est sadness. Fame has the further drawback that it compels its
votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their
fellow-men; shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what
they usually seek.
When I saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would
be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and
new, nay, that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or
it would have to be abandoned, I was forced to inquire which
would prove the most useful to me; for as I say, I seemed to be
willingly losing hold on a sure good for the sake of something
uncertain. However, after I had reflected on the matter, I came
in the first place to the conclusion that by abandoning the ordi-
nary objects of pursuit, and betaking myself to a new quest, I
should be leaving a good, uncertain by reason of its own nature,
as may be gathered from what has been said,- for the sake
of a good not uncertain (for I sought for a fixed good) save only
in the possibility of its attainment.
-
Further reflection convinced me that if I could really get
to the root of the matter, I should be leaving certain evils for a
certain good. I thus perceived that I was in a state of great
peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a
remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling
## p. 13795 (#629) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13795
with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be
upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such
a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies
therein. All the objects pursued by the multitude not only
bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act
as hindrances; causing the death not seldom of those who possess
them, and always of those who are possessed by them. There
are many examples of men who have suffered persecution even
to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pur-
suit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers
that they have paid away their life as a penalty for their folly.
Examples are no less numerous of men who have endured
the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving
their reputation. Lastly, there are innumerable cases of men
who have hastened their death through over-indulgence in sens-
ual pleasure.
All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact
that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the
quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved,
no quarrels will arise concerning it, no sadness will be felt if it
perishes, no envy if it is possessed by another, no fear, no hatred,
-in short, no disturbances of the mind. All these arise from
the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already men-
tioned. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the
mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness;
wherefore it is greatly to be desired, and sought for with all our
strength. Yet it was not at random that I used the words, "If
I could go to the root of the matter;" for though what I have
urged was perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay
aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. One thing
was evident; namely, that while my mind was employed with
these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire,
and seriously considered the search for a new principle: this
state of things was a great comfort to me, for I perceived that
the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. Although these
intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet after-.
wards, as the true good became more and more discernible
to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; especially
after I had recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual
pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought
as ends, not as means: if they be sought as means, they will be
under restraint; and far from being hindrances, will further not
## p. 13796 (#630) ##########################################
13796
BENEDICT SPINOZA
a little the end for which they are sought, as I will show in due
time.
I will here only briefly state what I mean by true good, and
also what is the nature of the highest good. In order that this
may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms.
good and evil are only applied relatively; so that the same thing
may be called both good and bad, according to the relations in
view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect.
Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or
imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which
come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and
fixed laws of nature. However, human weakness cannot attain to
this order of its own thoughts; but meanwhile man conceives a
human character much more stable than his own, and sees that
there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a char-
acter. Thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him
to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve
as such means a true good. The chief good is that he should
arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the posses-
sion of the aforesaid character. What that character is we shall
show in due time,—namely, that it is the knowledge of the union
existing between the mind and the whole of nature. This, then,
is the end for which I strive: to attain to such a character
myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me.
In other words, it is part of my happiness to lend a helping
hand that many others may understand even as I do, that their
understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. In
order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much
of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character;
and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to
the attainment of this character by the greatest number, with
the least difficulty and danger. We must seek the assistance of
moral philosophy and the theory of education; further, as health
is no insignificant means for attaining our end, we must also in-
clude the whole science of medicine; and as many difficult things
are by contrivance rendered easy, and we can in this way gain
much time and convenience, the science of mechanics must in
no way be despised. But before all things, a means must be
devised for improving the understanding and purifying it, as far
as may be, at the outset, so that it may apprehend things without
error, and in the best possible way.
## p. 13797 (#631) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13797
Thus it is apparent to every one that I wish to direct all
sciences to one end and aim, so that we may attain to the
supreme human perfection which we have named; and therefore,
whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote one object
will have to be rejected as useless. To sum up the matter in
a word, all our actions and thoughts must be directed to this
one end. Yet as it is necessary that while we are endeavoring
to attain our purpose, and bring the understanding into the right
path, we should carry on our life, we are compelled first of all
to lay down certain rules of life as provisionally good,-to wit,
the following:-
I. To speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and
to comply with every general custom that does not hinder the
attainment of our purpose. For we can gain from the multi-
tude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate
ourselves to its understanding as far as possible; moreover, we
shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of
the truth.
II. To indulge ourselves with pleasures only in so far as they
are necessary for preserving health.
III. Lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or
other commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health,
and to follow such general customs as are consistent with our
purpose.
MENTAL FREEDOM
AT
LENGTH I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics,'
which is concerned with the way leading to freedom. I
shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason,
showing how far the reason can control the emotions, and what
is the nature of mental freedom or blessedness: we shall then be
able to see how much more powerful the wise man is than the
ignorant. It is no part of my design to point out the method
and means whereby the understanding may be perfected, nor to
show the skill whereby the body may be so tended as to be capa-
ble of the due performance of its functions. The latter question
lies in the province of medicine, the former in the province of
logic. Here, therefore, I repeat, I shall treat only of the power
of the mind, or of reason; and I shall mainly show the extent
## p. 13798 (#632) ##########################################
13798
BENEDICT SPINOZA
and nature of its dominion over the emotions, for their control
and moderation.
That we do not possess absolute dominion over them, I have
already shown. Yet the Stoics have thought that the emotions
depended absolutely on our will, and that we could absolutely
govern them.
But these philosophers were compelled-by the
protest of experience, not from their own principles-to confess
that no slight practice and zeal is needed to control and moder-
ate them; and this some one endeavored to illustrate by the
example (if I remember rightly) of two dogs,- the one a house-
dog and the other a hunting-dog. For by long training it could
be brought about that the house-dog should become accustomed
to hunt, and the hunting-dog to cease from running after hares.
To this opinion Descartes not a little inclines. For he main-
tained that the soul or mind is specially united to a particular
part of the brain,—namely, to that part called the pineal gland,
- by the aid of which the mind is enabled to feel all the move-
ments which are set going in the body, and also external objects;
and which the mind by a simple act of volition can put in
motion in various ways. He asserted that this gland is so sus-
pended in the midst of the brain that it could be moved by the
slightest motion of the animal spirits; further, that this gland is
suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different man-
ners as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and again, that
as many different marks are impressed on the said gland as
there are different external objects which impel the animal spir-
its towards it: whence it follows, that if the will of the soul
suspends the gland in a position wherein it has already been
suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way
or another, the gland in its turn reacts on the said spirits, driv-
ing and determining them to the condition wherein they were
when repulsed before by a similar position of the gland.
He further asserted that every act of mental volition is united
in nature to a certain given motion of the gland. For instance,
whenever any one desires to look at a remote object, the act of
volition causes the pupil of the eye to dilate; whereas if the per-
son in question had only thought of the dilation of the pupil,
the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the
result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to
impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which
would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature
## p. 13799 (#633) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13799
with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish
to look at remote or very near objects.
Lastly, he maintained that although every motion of the afore-
said gland seems to have been united by nature to one particular
thought, out of the whole number of our thoughts, from the very
beginning of our life, yet it can nevertheless become through.
habituation associated with other thoughts: this he endeavors
to prove in the 'Passions de l'Âme. ' He thence concludes that
there is no soul so weak that it cannot, under proper direction,
acquire absolute power over its passions. For passions as defined.
by him are "perceptions, or feelings, or disturbances of the soul,
which are referred to the soul as species, and which (mark the
expression) are produced, preserved, and strengthened, through
some movement of the spirits. " But seeing that we can join
any motion of the gland, or consequently of the spirits, to any
volition, the determination of the will depends entirely on our
own powers; if therefore we determine our will with sure and
firm decisions in the direction to which we wish our actions to
tend, and associate the motions of the passions which we wish
to acquire with the said decisions, we shall acquire an absolute
dominion over our passions.
Such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher (in so far
as I gather it from his own words): it is one, which, had it been
less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so
great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder that a philosopher
who had stoutly asserted that he would draw no conclusions
which do not follow from self-evident premises, and would affirm
nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who
had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain
obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis.
beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he
understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body?
What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in
most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter?
Truly I should like him to explain this union through its proxi-
mate cause. But he had so distinct a conception of mind being.
distinct from body, that he could not assign any particular cause
of the union between the two, or of the mind itself, but was
obliged to have recourse to the cause of the whole universe,—
that is, to God.
## p. 13800 (#634) ##########################################
13800
BENEDICT SPINOZA
Further, I should much like to know what degree of motion
the mind can impart to this pineal gland, and with what force
can it hold it suspended? For I am in ignorance whether this
gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind.
than by the animal spirits, and whether the motions of the pas-
sions, which we have closely united with firm decisions, cannot
be again disjoined therefrom by physical causes; in which case
it would follow that although the mind firmly intended to face
a given danger, and had united to this decision the motions of
boldness, yet at the sight of the danger the gland might become
suspended in a way which would preclude the mind thinking of
anything except running away.
In truth, as there is no common standard of volition and
motion, so is there no comparison possible between the powers
of the mind and the power or strength of the body; consequently
the strength of one cannot in any wise be determined by the
strength of the other. We may also add that there is no gland
discoverable in the midst of the brain, so placed that it can thus
easily be set in motion in so many ways; and also that all the
nerves are not prolonged so far as the cavities of the brain.
Lastly, I omit all the assertions which he makes concerning the
will and its freedom, inasmuch as I have abundantly proved that
his premises are false. Therefore since the power of the mind,
as I have shown above, is defined by the understanding only, we
shall determine solely by the knowledge of the mind the reme-
dies against the emotions, which I believe all have had experi-
ence of, but do not accurately observe or distinctly see; and from
the same basis we shall deduce all those conclusions which have
regard to the mind's blessedness.
SUPERSTITION AND FEAR
M
EN would never be superstitious if they could govern all
their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always
favored by fortune; but being frequently driven into
straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating
pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's
greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part,
very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swerved.
## p. 13801 (#635) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13801
this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and
fear are struggling for the mastery; though usually it is boast-
ful, over-confident, and vain.
This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though
few, I believe, know their own nature: no one can have lived in
the world without observing that most people, when in pros-
perity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced
they may be) that they take every offer of advice as a personal
insult; whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but
beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then
too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most
frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into
despair; if anything happens during their fright which reminds
them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or
unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abort-
ive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen.
Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a
portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme
Being; and mistaking superstition for religion, account it impi-
ous not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and
wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might
think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantas-
tically.
Thus it is brought prominently before us that superstition's
chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal ad-
vantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger,
and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and woman-
ish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind,
because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue,
and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phan-
toms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to
be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away
from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man
but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by
the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is
the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!
Superstition then is engendered, preserved, and fostered, by
fear. If any one desire an example, let him take Alexander,
who only began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when
he first learnt to fear fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius, v.
4); whereas after he had conquered Darius he consulted prophets
## p. 13802 (#636) ##########################################
13802
BENEDICT SPINOZA
no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. When the
Scythians were provoking a battle, the Bactrians had deserted,
and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more
turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade
Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue
of affairs with sacrificed victims. " Very numerous examples of
a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact that only
while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to super-
stition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence
of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful
minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the peo-
ple, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times
when the State is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain
to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.
The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear
reason for the fact that it comes to all men naturally,— though
some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to man-
kind, and also tends to show that it is no less inconsistent and
variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses,
and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger,
and deceit; since it springs not from reason, but solely from the
more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily
understand how difficult it is to maintain in the same course
men prone to every form of credulity. For as the mass of man-
kind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never
assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by
a novelty which has not yet proved illusive.
This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many
terrible wars and revolutions; for as Curtius well says (Lib. iv. ,
Chap. 10), "The mob has no ruler more potent than supersti-
tion," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to
adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them
as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore
been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether
true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it may rise
superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious
reverence by the whole people; a system which has been brought
to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even contro-
versy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas.
that they leave no room for sound reason,- not even enough to
doubt with.
―――――
-
## p. 13803 (#637) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13803
But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mys-
tery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear which
keeps them down with the specious garb of religion, so that men
may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not
shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for
the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free State no more mischiev-
ous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repug-
nant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's
minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any
of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions.
only spring up when law enters the domain of speculative
thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the
same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them
are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred
and cruelty. If deeds only could be made the grounds of crimi-
nal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such
seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification,
and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and
fast line.
Now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a
republic, where every one's judgment is free and unshackled,
where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and
where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I
have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or un-
profitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom
be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also that
without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace
be secure.
Such is the chief conclusion I seek to establish in this treatise:
but in order to reach it, I must first point out the misconceptions
which, like scars of our former bondage, still disfigure our notion
of religion; and must expose the false views about the civil
authority which many have most imprudently advocated, endeavor-
ing to turn the mind of the people, still prone to heathen super-
stition, away from its legitimate rulers, and so bring us again
into slavery. As to the order of my treatise I will speak pres-
ently; but first I will recount the causes which led me to write.
I have often wondered that persons who make a boast of
professing the Christian religion - namely, love, joy, peace, tem-
perance, and charity to all men - should quarrel with such rancor-
ous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter
-
## p. 13804 (#638) ##########################################
13804
BENEDICT SPINOZA
hatred; that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readi-
est criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come to
such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man Christian, Turk,
Jew, or heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his
frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the
phraseology of a particular sect; as for manner of life, it is in
all cases the same. Inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads
me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact that the ministries of
the Church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her
offices as posts of emolument,-in short, popular religion may be
summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this mis-
conception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire
to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's reli-
gion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church
became a theatre, where orators instead of church teachers ha-
rangued; caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract
admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach
only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of
their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up
an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of
time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the
old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these,
in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adora-
tion of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound
of credulity and prejudices,—aye, prejudices too which degrade
man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the
power of judgment between true and false, which seem in fact
carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark
of reason! Piety-great God! - and religion are become a tis-
sue of ridiculous mysteries: men who flatly despise reason, who
reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt,
these I say, these of all men, are thought-oh, lie most horrible!
-to possess light from on high. Verily, if they had but one spark
of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would
learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked
among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice: if
they were concerned for their opponents' souls instead of for
their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute,
but rather be filled with pity and compassion.
## p. 13805 (#639) ##########################################
13805
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
(1835-)
HE work of Harriet Prescott Spofford possesses to a high de-
gree the quality of distinction. About her prose and her
verse is the atmosphere of spiritual aristocracy, of rarity,
as of that which emanates from one elect in mind and soul; yet this
refinement of vision in no sense implies coldness. Mrs. Spofford,
like Pater, combines an almost austere spirituality with the warm
sensuousness of the artist, who lives in full and blissful consciousness
of color and light and form. These characteristics receive their
completest expression in her greatest short
story, The Amber Gods. ' Seldom or never
has the appreciation of the imperiousness of
the senses been blended so perfectly with
the recognition of the authority of the soul.
These two elements, of flesh and of spirit,
are again fused in 'In Titian's Garden,' a
poem itself like some great flower.
A New England Puritan by descent,
Harriet Prescott was born in Calais, Maine,
April 3d, 1835. During her childhood the
family removed to the quaint old coast-town
of Newburyport, Massachusetts, where her
early girlhood passed, and where she at-
tended school,-her unfolding genius attract-
ing the attention of T. W. Higginson, who, now widely known as a
distinguished man of letters, was at that time a clergyman and the
young girl's pastor. It is related that when she sent to the Atlantic
Monthly her first contribution, -a brilliant and subtle study of French
life, called 'In a Cellar,'- the editor wrote to Newburyport for an
assurance that this ingenious tale of love and diplomacy was not a
translation from some French master of the short story; and that
Mr. Higginson cheerfully gave the necessary guarantee of good faith,
adding that the young author had never been out of New England,
and that her brilliant Paris was a city of the imagination. At twenty
she had finished a romance, 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; and she was only a
year or two older when 'The Amber Gods' appeared in the Atlantic.
The sustained strength, intense dramatic movement, psychic percep-
tion, and rich vocabulary, so prodigally displayed therein, became the
HARRIET SPOFFORD
## p. 13806 (#640) ##########################################
13806
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
obvious characteristics of her later work. If she has done many
other things as well, during a long and scarcely interrupted literary
career, she has done nothing better. Her fiction is characterized not
alone by opulent style, mastery of plot, charm of quick transition
from the gay to the sad, from the tragic to the comic, by skill in
dialogue and management of climax; but by that quality of distinc-
tion already spoken of. Moreover, in every-day themes of every-day
existence she has the happy art of transfiguring the commonplace.
Among her stories of greater length than the ordinary maga-
zine sketch are 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; 'The Thief in the Night'; 'The
Master-Spirit,' which reveals a deep knowledge of the history of
music and comprehension of its divine language; and The Inherit-
ance,' which deals both keenly and tenderly with an appalling prob-
lem of human destiny.
In 1865 Miss Prescott married Mr. Richard Spofford; a brilliant
young lawyer of the Massachusetts bar, whose literary tastes and cul-
tivated critical judgment encouraged her gifts to a fine and constant
flowering.
Mrs. Spofford's published volumes are seventeen in all, among
them several volumes of poems and ballads; the last, 'In Titian's
Garden,' displaying the rich maturity of her powers,—for it is in
poetry that her mind finds its fullest expression. Her literary mas-
ters have been Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning.
As an essayist, and a writer of forcible editorials on current events,
she has great skill; having the courage of her convictions, and a
manner at once energetic, sincere, and winning. She takes first rank
among American women of letters, because she possesses the entire
range of the artist,-the domain of the seen and the domain of the
unseen.
[By permission of Mr. John Brisben Walker, editor of The Cosmopolitan. ']
THE GODMOTHERS
THE
HEY were all bidden to the christening, all the godmothers-
if by good hap none had been forgotten.
And of course they came. The christening of a L'Aigle-
noir Franche du Roy was no mean occasion, under the circum-
stances, but one to which the family must do honor, if they
hastened from the ends of the earth-and beyond.
They did not arrive with the stir befitting L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But that might be because of the inborn
gentilesse which taught them the proprieties of the sick-room.
The young mother, as she lay in the dim vast chamber of the
## p. 13807 (#641) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13807
old castle, hearing the cry of the wind over the cold Atlantic,
saw them come in singly, and in groups, and at intervals. Very
faint and weak, and with some awe in her soul before the new
being she had evoked, perhaps she dropped asleep in the space of
time between their coming; for when she opened her startled
eyes, another was appearing.
At first Rosomond did not comprehend it. She felt annoyed
at the intrusion. She turned her eyes to the place where the
bassinet swung under its laces; the pair of candles in the wall
sconce behind it making that the sole spot of light in the long
room full of shadows, where lay the little morsel of life for
which she had so nearly surrendered her own, and toward which
her heart swelled with a sense of infinite dearness.
«Do not,
do not touch him! " she murmured apprehensively to the woman
bending there with her purples sweeping about her, and the
glitter of her diamonds like dagger-points.
And then the plumed and coroneted woman had disappeared
behind a curtain into the recesses of the deep casements, perhaps;
and the young countess closed her eyes forgetfully.
"Yes," she was saying to herself, when with a little flutter
her lids opened again, some time afterwards, "that is the old
countess who brought the Franche du Roy lands to the L'Aigle-
noirs. It is her portrait that hangs high next the oriel in the
sea-gallery. I could never satisfy myself, as I walked there in
the late afternoons, if it were a shadow of the carved ceiling on
her forehead, or a stain that had come out. The stain is there
She was a king's favorite.
now.
"Do not touch my little innocent child! " she cried suddenly,
rising on one arm. Did her senses deceive her? Did she hear
the woman answer, "But it is my child too! "
And a shudder seized her as suddenly: that woman's blood ran
in her child's veins! Ah, if she knew just where, she would let
it out this minute! And then she fell back, laughing at herself.
There were others in the room when her gaze again wandered
down its length. Oh, yes, she had seen them all before. Had
they stepped from their frames in the long sea-gallery?
The beautiful young being in the white brocade sown with
violets, the band of brilliants in her red-gold hair, mother of the
count's father, she who later had rivaled Eugénie in Eugénie's
court,-Eugénie, who had the resources of an empire, and the
L'Aiglenoirs had nothing,-yet, ah no, it was empty sound, the
## p. 13808 (#642) ##########################################
13808
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
scandal that those resplendent toilets were a part of the bribes of
senators. She who was a Bourbon D'Archambeau! Nor would
Rosomond believe the rumor concerning moneys obtained by the
dexterous writing of great officials' names-forgery, counterfeit,
what you will-by that other laughing lovely thing, a wife out
of the convent, a mother at sixteen, the last countess, launched
upon life without a scruple or a sou, who loved pleasure so pas-
sionately that she came to live at last upon chloral and opium,
and died dancing.
She had often silently made friends with these captivating
young women, when unable to go out, and during her lonely
pacing up and down the length of the sea-gallery, with the low
roar of the surge in her ears; while her husband, who had
brought her down here with a loving fancy that his child might
be born in the ancestral stronghold which some of her own mil-
lions were restoring to its ancient grandeur, was away on the
water, or in the hunt, or perhaps at the races.
She would not think ill of them now: they alone of all the
women on the wall had not seemed to think ill of her, to look
at her as a parvenu and an interloper; had seemed to have about
them something of the spirit of the century, to have breathed air
she breathed herself.
It was natural that the last countess, the pretty piquant creat-
ure, should have loved splendid gowns; -kept in homespun all
the earlier days by her father's mother, the old marchioness,-
the miser whose hands grew yellow counting her gold. Tante
Alixe had told Rosomond of it. There she was now,- the old
marchioness,-gasping for more air, but just as she was painted
in her dusky robes; with the long ivory hands like the talons of
a bird of prey,—the talons of a L'Aiglenoir,- mumbling of the
revenue she had wrung from her peasants, who starved on black
bread to buy of her the privilege of living.
Perhaps it was thought she had that privilege too long her-
self. She had died suddenly-very suddenly. Her son, the
marquis, was a partisan and a man of power: a great deal of
gold was needed in the intrigues concerning the two kings.
And here was another who had died suddenly-but in the
open air.
There was a red line round her slender throat, too
dull for the ruby necklace she wore in the portrait in the panel;
the tall, fair aristocrat whose long white throat, alas! had felt
the swift kiss of the guillotine's blade. There was not the look
## p. 13809 (#643) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13809
of hate and horror in the portrait that was on her face now;
only the languor of many pleasures there, the proud and insolent
indifference to the pain, the want, the suffering, from which those
pleasures had been pressed like wine that left the must.
"The canaille," she seemed to say,-"they die? so much the
less vermin. They suffer? and what of it? ""
>>>>
Her husband had told Rosomond when he first led her down
the long sea-gallery, the story of this proud lady who thought
the world made only for her class. It had passed the idle hour:
Rosomond had not thought of it again. He had told her all
their stories, that of the strangely wrinkled old baroness, with
her eyes like sparks of fire in the midst of ashes, once herself
blooming and fair to see, who had kept the keys of the king's
hunting-lodge, and provided for his pleasures there. "Well, yes,'
the young count had said, "but what will you have? She was
no worse than her time. They were infamous times. " He had
told her of that blue-eyed waxen woman painted in the Sir Peter
Lely, a beauty who had followed the fortunes of Charles Stuart
into France, very like, but who had come into the L'Aiglenoir
family later by the church door; of the Vandyke,- the blonde
devotee who went over with La Reine Henriette, and came to a
madhouse at last; of the Antonio Moro, vanishing in her golden-
brown shadows,—an attendant of the English Mary, a confidante
of Philip of Spain, who had read her missal at an auto da fé; of
the Rubens, the half-clad woman like an overblown rose, a great
red rose with the sun on its velvet and dewy petals; —if face and
frame spoke for her, a woman who was only an embodied sin;-
of the Holbein,- a creature whose appetites had devoured her
and left themselves only on the canvas; of the possible Titian—
"See the gold of her hair," said the count. "It was dyed. But
all the same, Titian-it must have been Titian-knew how to
hide the sun in every strand. What a lustre of skin! What a
bloom on the cheek. it never blushed with shame. What a lus-
cious lip-it knew forbidden kisses, it denounced a brother to
the Ten. What a glory in the eye-yet if all traditions are true,
that eye saw a lover disappear as the gondola touched the deep
water that tells no tales. See the hand: what contour, what fine-
ness, what delicacy-and the life in it! But it knew how to
play with a poniard whose tip was touched with poison. She did
her little best to betray Venice for a price; and she had to leave
with the French army, of course. "
XXIII-864
-
―――――――――
――――――
## p. 13810 (#644) ##########################################
13810
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"I should think you would be glad it is all only tradition,"
Rosomond had said.
"I don't know. You see the king gave her a duchy, and
she brought it into the family. The title lapsed, to be sure; and
the revenues went long ago in gaming debts. Do you note that
damsel in the white satin,- the Geraart Terburg? Her face is
like a live pearl. Well, she was the stake once in some high
play. "
That would have been dreadful if it were true. "
"As you please," said the count with a shrug.
"And were there no good women, no honorable men? "
"Oh, but plenty! But, ma chérie, happiness has no history,
virtue has few adventures. Their portraits fade out on the wall
as they themselves do in the line. It is the big wills, the big
passions, that are memorable- that drown out those others, the
weak, that have made the L'Aiglenoirs what they are. Those
imbeciles, they are like René's father the day of his burial,
'as if he had never existed. " And he went on with his narrative.
-
"But it is a gallery! If we had it at home, and - pardon-
reckoned its commercial value — »
"Alas! The pictures are no more certified than the traditions!
And then, one does not willingly part with one's people. Yet -
if that were indeed a Titian- »
"You would not have gone over to America to marry me. "
"I should not perhaps have gone over to America to marry
the heiress of the New World, repeating the adventures of the
knights of long ago, but in modern dress. I should have had no
need. But I would have married you, Rosomond, had I met you
on the dark side of the moon, or else have flung myself headlong
into space! "
"You forget the attraction of gravitation. "
"Your attraction is the greater. "
"Now I do not believe you. The language of hyperbole is
not the language of truth. "
―――――――――――
"Pleasantry aside, you must always believe I speak truth, my
wife, when I say that whatever led me in the beginning, it is
love that overcame me in the end. I could not perhaps have
married, I who love pleasure too,-if you had not been the
daughter of Dives. For we were beggared-we poor L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But the thing being made possible, I simply
entered heaven, Rosomond! ”
## p. 13811 (#645) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13811
"And I," said Rosomond, as she stood in the deep window-
place, looking up at him a moment, and back again swiftly to
the sea.
"And if it were a title against a fortune, as Newport said,
and as the Faubourg held a matter of course-although Heaven
knows a title means nothing now, and will not till the King-the
good God have his Majesty in keeping! —is at home again — »
"Oh, let us forget all that, fortune or title! " Rosomond had
said.
"No; no. For if the fortune arrive to repair the fortunes of
the house of L'Aiglenoir, why not? It is your house, Rosomond.
It is the house of your child. And we will make a new house
of it. The L'Aiglenoir of the twentieth century shall again be
the prime minister of the King of France. The new blood, the
new gold, shall make new fortunes, shall bring back the old
force and will and power; and we will leave these dusty memo-
ries behind, and ask no one of them to the christening! "
«< Perhaps so," Rosomond had said, half under her breath.
"But you have been a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving people,” she
added presently. "And with rank, with wealth, with opportunity
- it does not tend to bring back the old brute strength. "
"Well, then," the count lightly answered her, "let us take
some of the pleasure! See, how purple is the water beyond the
white lip on the reefs. We will go try the outer sea, and drift
an hour or two in the soft wind. And I will tell you how beau-
tiful you are, ma belle Américaine, and you shall tell me what
a sailor I am. It is not the sailing of the old sea-robber who
came down here to assault the castle in the days of that grand-
mother of mine twenty times removed, in the days of La Dame
Blanche, to take her with her belongings and marry her by
storm - but it is pleasanter, my sweet. "
-
That had been in the bright spring months. Now autumn
winds swept the Atlantic, and cried in the tops of the ragged
pines below the castle's cliff. Many a day had Rosomond sat
there, listening for the sea measures, and fancying the beat of
the surf was the washing of the wave under the keel that car-
ried Tristan and Isolde, a thousand years ago and more, on the
waters just beyond; heard the very music of Isolde's wild lament;
watched for the white sail across the reef as if the sick knight
lay in the court-yard within under the linden-tree, in all the
## p. 13812 (#646) ##########################################
13812-
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
pathos of song and beauty and tragic fate; felt herself taken
into a world of romance, where the murmuring of the breeze
in the bough was the murmur of the skirts of the great forest of
Broceliande.
But this had nothing to do with romance now. She lay in
bed, with her little child near at hand,—the attendants just with-
out,-in the tower chamber where for generations the L'Aigle-
noirs had been born.
Through the deep windows she saw the swift-flying moon
touch the clouds sweeping in the wind, and light the swale on
the dark and lifted sea beyond; look in and now and again silver
the faces of the paladins and maidens in the pale blue-green
forest of the old tapestry, that slightly rippled and rose and fell,
as if with a consciousness of the windy gust that sung outside
the tower. It was that old paladin with the truncheon — a
paladin of Charlemagne's-from whom the Franche du Roys
counted. It was the châtelaine with the flagon that gave him his
quietus.
What did it all mean, though, at this moment? With the
heavy swaying of the tapestry, had these people by any chance.
left their silken shroud and come out into the room to look at
the child?
Not the twelve white-faced nuns; not the featureless young
squires and dames: but that old châtelaine of whose needle-
wrought semblance she had always been half afraid,-who car-
ried the golden flagon and gave the knight to drink, perhaps for
sleep, perhaps for death. Yes, that was she; but she had left
her majesty in the hangings, with her veil and horned head-
piece, her trailing samite and cloth of gold of cramoisie. Here,
with her thin gray tattered locks, pallid, pinched, and shrunken,
white as some reptile blanched beneath a stone, what was she to
be afraid of now? But this other-"Once the place was mine,
mine and my love's! " she was exclaiming. "Till the sea dark-
ened with their gilded prows, the sky darkened with their bitter
arrows! " Ah, yes, how many hundreds of years ago it was since
she defended the castle after a lance-head laid her lord low; and
the sea-rover had scaled the heights and taken her, loathing and
hating him, to wife. And from them had been born the line of
the L'Aiglenoirs!
And what was she doing here? What were they all doing
here, these women? What right had they in her room? Why
## p. 13813 (#647) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13813
were they looking with such ardent and eager eyes, murmuring
among themselves, hurrying past one another toward the child?
"Give way! " was La Dame Blanche exclaiming. "I was the
first. "
"Après moi," said the laughing lady, flittering along in her
butterfly gauzes, the diamonds in her tiara flashing out and
reluming again. "I am the last. "
"If so false a thing ever existed at all," said the woman with
the mass-book, or was it a book of jests? -the Flemish woman
who sold her daughter for a tulip.
"I give you my word I existed! " was the gay reply.
"Under your own signature? " asked the pretty patched and
powdered Watteau.
-
"Never mind whose signature. "
"Worthless," murmured a lady, lifting her black lace mask
from features sharp as a death's-head, and of a tint as wan as
the tints of a Boucher design,—“worthless in any event. "
"Ah, madame, from you to me? I was but your natural con-
sequence, you Voltairiennes, as you were all born on the night of
St. Bartholomew! "
"Its tocsin still rings in the air! I am condemned ever to
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
And then the laughing lady twitched her beads; and there fell
out from her sleeve the perfumed fan whose breath was fever,
the gloves whose palms were deadly, brought with her Medicean.
mistress from Italy.
"A truce! ” cried the gay lady. "The birth of an heir to the
L'Aiglenoir Franche du Roys, with wealth to restore the ancient
splendor, is an event for due ceremony and precedence. I am
the child's grandmother, his very next of kin among us. And
you know the rights of the grandmother in France. "
«< They are our rights! " came a shrill multitudinous murmur.
"We all are grandmothers! "
"Are we all here ? " came a hollow whisper from the châte-
laine, the candlelight flickering in her flagon.
"All the fairy godmothers? " cried the gay lady.
"No, no," said La Dame Blanche: "there is one who has been
forgotten. "
"The wicked fairy," said the gay lady. "The rest of us are
of such a virtue. He will value us like his other objets de vertu. »
## p. 13814 (#648) ##########################################
13814
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
A COLD shiver coursed over Rosomond, but her eyes burned
with the intensity of her gaze. She understood it now. He was
the child of their blood. That was why they were here, why
they intruded themselves into her room. They had a right. It
had been their own room. For how many generations had the
L'Aiglenoirs been born in this room! She had never thought of
this when she sailed so gayly out of harbor, a bride with her
bridegroom, wearing his title, protected by his arm, so proud,
so glad, so happy that she had the wealth he needed, all that
so trifling beside the fact that they loved each other. She had
never dreamed of the little child to come, who would be dearer
than her life to her, and in whose veins must run a black drop
of the blood of all these creatures.
-
And now-oh, was there no remedy? Was there nothing
to counteract it, nothing to dissipate that black drop, to make
it colorless, powerless, harmless, a thing of air? Were there no
sweet, good people among all those dead and gone women?
Ah, yes, indeed, there they were! Far off, by the curtain of
the doorway, huddled together like a flock of frightened doves:
gentle ladies, quiet, timid, humble before heaven; ladies of placid
lives, no opportunities, small emotions, narrow routine; praying
by form, acting by precedent, without individuality; whose good-
ness was negative, whose doings were paltry; their poor drab be-
ings swamped and drowned and extinguished in the purples and
scarlets of these women of great passions, of scope, of daring
and deed and electric force, mates of men of force, whose posi-
tion had called crime to its aid, whose very crimes had enlarged
them, whose sins were things of power, strengthening their per-
sonality if but for evil, transmitting their potentiality—oh, no,
these gentle ladies signified nothing here!
A cold dew bathed Rosomond and beaded her brow. But
were the L'Aiglenoirs and their order all there were? Where
were her own people? Had they no right in the child? Could
they not cross the seas? Was there no requiting strength
among them? None in the mother of her father,―king of rail-
roads and mines and vast southwestern territory,-that stern,
repressed woman, who had spared and starved and saved to start.
her son in life? "Come! " cried Rosomond. "Come, my own
people! Oh, I need you now, I and my child! "
But among all these splendid dames of quality, accustomed to
wide outlook on the world, and a part of the events of nations,
## p.
there is matter there is mind, and vice versa. That this last fact es-
capes us ordinarily is due to the limitation of our natures. Our minds
## p. 13792 (#626) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13792
are part of the Divine Thought, just as our bodies are part of the
Divine Extension. But we know directly only so much of mind as
corresponds to our own bodily processes, viewed in their linkage and
in their unity. Hence other bodies seem to us inanimate. As a fact,
matter and mind are parallel and coextensive throughout the uni-
verse. On the other hand, although perfectly correspondent, insepa-
rable, and parallel (for each is in its own way an expression of
precisely the same Divine truth which the other expresses), matter
and mind, close companions as they are, never causally affect each
other; but each is determined solely by its own inner laws. Ideas
cause ideas; bodies move bodies: but bodies never produce mental
states, nor do thoughts issue in physical movements, even in case of
our own bodies and minds. The appearance which makes this seem
true, when our mind and bodies appear to interact, is due to the prin-
ciple that "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the
order and connection of things," owing precisely to the parallelism of
the attributes. Hence just when a given physical state takes place
in our bodies, the parallel idea, by virtue of the laws of mind, is sure
to arise in our consciousness.
This theory of the independence and parallelism of mind and body
has played, as we have said, a great part in more recent discussion;
and survives, as the doctrine of the "psycho-physical parallelism," in
modern scientific discussions which are far removed in many respects
from Spinoza's metaphysics.
The practical consequences of the system of Spinoza are worked
out by the author in the later divisions of his 'Ethics,' in a manner
which has become classic; although, as pointed out above, Spinoza's
distinctive historical influence is due rather to his general theories.
But as one way of telling the ancient tale of the wise man's life in
God, the practical interpretation which Spinoza gives to monism may
well stand beside the other classics of Stoical and of mystical lore.
Since there is naught but God, and since in God there is fulfilled, in
an impersonal but none the less perfect way, all that our thought
aims to know, and all that even our blind passions mistakenly strive
to attain, the wise man, according to Spinoza, enjoys an absolute
" acquiescence" in whatever the infinite wisdom produces. God is
absolute, and can lack nothing; hence apparent evil is a merely nega-
tive "deprivation » of good, a deprivation itself due only to our in-
adequate view,-i. e. , only to error. Evil is, then, nothing positive.
And the wise man, seeing all things in God, loves God with a love
that is identical with God's love of his own perfection. For God, if
not conscious in our fleeting way, has still the fulfillment of all that
consciousness means, in the very perfection of his thinking attribute;
so that our thoughts are God's very thoughts precisely in so far as
## p. 13793 (#627) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13793
our thoughts are rational, complete, adequate, true. In other words,
in so far as we are wise, we directly enter into the perfection of God
himself.
Since thoughts of a very similar type have received a frequent
expression in writings reputed orthodox, it is not surprising that
many who easily fear the name pantheism have still been ready to
reverence, in Spinoza, the spirit, profound if inadequate, which in
such fashion embodies, in our philosopher's work, one of the most
universal motives of piety.
Josiah Royce.
THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING
FTER had taught me that all the usual surround-
Aings of social life are vain and futile,-seeing that none of
the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything
either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by
them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be
some real good having power to communicate itself, which would
affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in
fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attain-
ment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending
happiness. I say "I finally resolved"; for at first sight it seemed
unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of
something then uncertain. I could see the benefits which are
acquired through fame and riches, and that I should be obliged
to abandon the quest of such objects if I seriously devoted my-
self to the search for something different and new. I perceived
that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former, I
should necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were
not so placed, and I gave them my whole attention, I should
equally fail.
I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive
at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its
existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my
life; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in vain.
For the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men
(as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed
XXIII-863
―
## p. 13794 (#628) ##########################################
13794
BENEDICT SPINOZA
under the three heads - Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of
Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little
power to reflect on any different good. By sensual pleasure the
mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme
good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of think-
ing of any other object: when such pleasure has been gratified it
is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though
not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled.
The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing,
especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake,
inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest
good. In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed; for
fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the
ultimate end to which all actions are directed. Further, the
attainment of riches and fame is not followed, as in the case of
sensual pleasures, by repentance: but the more we acquire the
greater is our delight, and consequently the more are we incited
to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if
our hopes happen to be frustrated, we are plunged into the deep-
est sadness. Fame has the further drawback that it compels its
votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their
fellow-men; shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what
they usually seek.
When I saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would
be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and
new, nay, that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or
it would have to be abandoned, I was forced to inquire which
would prove the most useful to me; for as I say, I seemed to be
willingly losing hold on a sure good for the sake of something
uncertain. However, after I had reflected on the matter, I came
in the first place to the conclusion that by abandoning the ordi-
nary objects of pursuit, and betaking myself to a new quest, I
should be leaving a good, uncertain by reason of its own nature,
as may be gathered from what has been said,- for the sake
of a good not uncertain (for I sought for a fixed good) save only
in the possibility of its attainment.
-
Further reflection convinced me that if I could really get
to the root of the matter, I should be leaving certain evils for a
certain good. I thus perceived that I was in a state of great
peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a
remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling
## p. 13795 (#629) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13795
with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be
upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such
a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies
therein. All the objects pursued by the multitude not only
bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act
as hindrances; causing the death not seldom of those who possess
them, and always of those who are possessed by them. There
are many examples of men who have suffered persecution even
to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pur-
suit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers
that they have paid away their life as a penalty for their folly.
Examples are no less numerous of men who have endured
the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving
their reputation. Lastly, there are innumerable cases of men
who have hastened their death through over-indulgence in sens-
ual pleasure.
All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact
that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the
quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved,
no quarrels will arise concerning it, no sadness will be felt if it
perishes, no envy if it is possessed by another, no fear, no hatred,
-in short, no disturbances of the mind. All these arise from
the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already men-
tioned. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the
mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness;
wherefore it is greatly to be desired, and sought for with all our
strength. Yet it was not at random that I used the words, "If
I could go to the root of the matter;" for though what I have
urged was perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay
aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. One thing
was evident; namely, that while my mind was employed with
these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire,
and seriously considered the search for a new principle: this
state of things was a great comfort to me, for I perceived that
the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. Although these
intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet after-.
wards, as the true good became more and more discernible
to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; especially
after I had recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual
pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought
as ends, not as means: if they be sought as means, they will be
under restraint; and far from being hindrances, will further not
## p. 13796 (#630) ##########################################
13796
BENEDICT SPINOZA
a little the end for which they are sought, as I will show in due
time.
I will here only briefly state what I mean by true good, and
also what is the nature of the highest good. In order that this
may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms.
good and evil are only applied relatively; so that the same thing
may be called both good and bad, according to the relations in
view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect.
Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or
imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which
come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and
fixed laws of nature. However, human weakness cannot attain to
this order of its own thoughts; but meanwhile man conceives a
human character much more stable than his own, and sees that
there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a char-
acter. Thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him
to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve
as such means a true good. The chief good is that he should
arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the posses-
sion of the aforesaid character. What that character is we shall
show in due time,—namely, that it is the knowledge of the union
existing between the mind and the whole of nature. This, then,
is the end for which I strive: to attain to such a character
myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me.
In other words, it is part of my happiness to lend a helping
hand that many others may understand even as I do, that their
understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. In
order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much
of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character;
and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to
the attainment of this character by the greatest number, with
the least difficulty and danger. We must seek the assistance of
moral philosophy and the theory of education; further, as health
is no insignificant means for attaining our end, we must also in-
clude the whole science of medicine; and as many difficult things
are by contrivance rendered easy, and we can in this way gain
much time and convenience, the science of mechanics must in
no way be despised. But before all things, a means must be
devised for improving the understanding and purifying it, as far
as may be, at the outset, so that it may apprehend things without
error, and in the best possible way.
## p. 13797 (#631) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13797
Thus it is apparent to every one that I wish to direct all
sciences to one end and aim, so that we may attain to the
supreme human perfection which we have named; and therefore,
whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote one object
will have to be rejected as useless. To sum up the matter in
a word, all our actions and thoughts must be directed to this
one end. Yet as it is necessary that while we are endeavoring
to attain our purpose, and bring the understanding into the right
path, we should carry on our life, we are compelled first of all
to lay down certain rules of life as provisionally good,-to wit,
the following:-
I. To speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and
to comply with every general custom that does not hinder the
attainment of our purpose. For we can gain from the multi-
tude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate
ourselves to its understanding as far as possible; moreover, we
shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of
the truth.
II. To indulge ourselves with pleasures only in so far as they
are necessary for preserving health.
III. Lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or
other commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health,
and to follow such general customs as are consistent with our
purpose.
MENTAL FREEDOM
AT
LENGTH I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics,'
which is concerned with the way leading to freedom. I
shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason,
showing how far the reason can control the emotions, and what
is the nature of mental freedom or blessedness: we shall then be
able to see how much more powerful the wise man is than the
ignorant. It is no part of my design to point out the method
and means whereby the understanding may be perfected, nor to
show the skill whereby the body may be so tended as to be capa-
ble of the due performance of its functions. The latter question
lies in the province of medicine, the former in the province of
logic. Here, therefore, I repeat, I shall treat only of the power
of the mind, or of reason; and I shall mainly show the extent
## p. 13798 (#632) ##########################################
13798
BENEDICT SPINOZA
and nature of its dominion over the emotions, for their control
and moderation.
That we do not possess absolute dominion over them, I have
already shown. Yet the Stoics have thought that the emotions
depended absolutely on our will, and that we could absolutely
govern them.
But these philosophers were compelled-by the
protest of experience, not from their own principles-to confess
that no slight practice and zeal is needed to control and moder-
ate them; and this some one endeavored to illustrate by the
example (if I remember rightly) of two dogs,- the one a house-
dog and the other a hunting-dog. For by long training it could
be brought about that the house-dog should become accustomed
to hunt, and the hunting-dog to cease from running after hares.
To this opinion Descartes not a little inclines. For he main-
tained that the soul or mind is specially united to a particular
part of the brain,—namely, to that part called the pineal gland,
- by the aid of which the mind is enabled to feel all the move-
ments which are set going in the body, and also external objects;
and which the mind by a simple act of volition can put in
motion in various ways. He asserted that this gland is so sus-
pended in the midst of the brain that it could be moved by the
slightest motion of the animal spirits; further, that this gland is
suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different man-
ners as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and again, that
as many different marks are impressed on the said gland as
there are different external objects which impel the animal spir-
its towards it: whence it follows, that if the will of the soul
suspends the gland in a position wherein it has already been
suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way
or another, the gland in its turn reacts on the said spirits, driv-
ing and determining them to the condition wherein they were
when repulsed before by a similar position of the gland.
He further asserted that every act of mental volition is united
in nature to a certain given motion of the gland. For instance,
whenever any one desires to look at a remote object, the act of
volition causes the pupil of the eye to dilate; whereas if the per-
son in question had only thought of the dilation of the pupil,
the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the
result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to
impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which
would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature
## p. 13799 (#633) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13799
with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish
to look at remote or very near objects.
Lastly, he maintained that although every motion of the afore-
said gland seems to have been united by nature to one particular
thought, out of the whole number of our thoughts, from the very
beginning of our life, yet it can nevertheless become through.
habituation associated with other thoughts: this he endeavors
to prove in the 'Passions de l'Âme. ' He thence concludes that
there is no soul so weak that it cannot, under proper direction,
acquire absolute power over its passions. For passions as defined.
by him are "perceptions, or feelings, or disturbances of the soul,
which are referred to the soul as species, and which (mark the
expression) are produced, preserved, and strengthened, through
some movement of the spirits. " But seeing that we can join
any motion of the gland, or consequently of the spirits, to any
volition, the determination of the will depends entirely on our
own powers; if therefore we determine our will with sure and
firm decisions in the direction to which we wish our actions to
tend, and associate the motions of the passions which we wish
to acquire with the said decisions, we shall acquire an absolute
dominion over our passions.
Such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher (in so far
as I gather it from his own words): it is one, which, had it been
less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so
great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder that a philosopher
who had stoutly asserted that he would draw no conclusions
which do not follow from self-evident premises, and would affirm
nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who
had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain
obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis.
beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he
understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body?
What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in
most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter?
Truly I should like him to explain this union through its proxi-
mate cause. But he had so distinct a conception of mind being.
distinct from body, that he could not assign any particular cause
of the union between the two, or of the mind itself, but was
obliged to have recourse to the cause of the whole universe,—
that is, to God.
## p. 13800 (#634) ##########################################
13800
BENEDICT SPINOZA
Further, I should much like to know what degree of motion
the mind can impart to this pineal gland, and with what force
can it hold it suspended? For I am in ignorance whether this
gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind.
than by the animal spirits, and whether the motions of the pas-
sions, which we have closely united with firm decisions, cannot
be again disjoined therefrom by physical causes; in which case
it would follow that although the mind firmly intended to face
a given danger, and had united to this decision the motions of
boldness, yet at the sight of the danger the gland might become
suspended in a way which would preclude the mind thinking of
anything except running away.
In truth, as there is no common standard of volition and
motion, so is there no comparison possible between the powers
of the mind and the power or strength of the body; consequently
the strength of one cannot in any wise be determined by the
strength of the other. We may also add that there is no gland
discoverable in the midst of the brain, so placed that it can thus
easily be set in motion in so many ways; and also that all the
nerves are not prolonged so far as the cavities of the brain.
Lastly, I omit all the assertions which he makes concerning the
will and its freedom, inasmuch as I have abundantly proved that
his premises are false. Therefore since the power of the mind,
as I have shown above, is defined by the understanding only, we
shall determine solely by the knowledge of the mind the reme-
dies against the emotions, which I believe all have had experi-
ence of, but do not accurately observe or distinctly see; and from
the same basis we shall deduce all those conclusions which have
regard to the mind's blessedness.
SUPERSTITION AND FEAR
M
EN would never be superstitious if they could govern all
their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always
favored by fortune; but being frequently driven into
straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating
pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's
greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part,
very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swerved.
## p. 13801 (#635) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13801
this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and
fear are struggling for the mastery; though usually it is boast-
ful, over-confident, and vain.
This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, though
few, I believe, know their own nature: no one can have lived in
the world without observing that most people, when in pros-
perity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced
they may be) that they take every offer of advice as a personal
insult; whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but
beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No plan is then
too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most
frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into
despair; if anything happens during their fright which reminds
them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or
unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abort-
ive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen.
Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a
portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme
Being; and mistaking superstition for religion, account it impi-
ous not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs and
wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might
think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantas-
tically.
Thus it is brought prominently before us that superstition's
chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal ad-
vantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger,
and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and woman-
ish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind,
because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue,
and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phan-
toms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to
be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away
from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man
but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by
the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is
the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!
Superstition then is engendered, preserved, and fostered, by
fear. If any one desire an example, let him take Alexander,
who only began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when
he first learnt to fear fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius, v.
4); whereas after he had conquered Darius he consulted prophets
## p. 13802 (#636) ##########################################
13802
BENEDICT SPINOZA
no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. When the
Scythians were provoking a battle, the Bactrians had deserted,
and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more
turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade
Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue
of affairs with sacrificed victims. " Very numerous examples of
a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact that only
while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to super-
stition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence
of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful
minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the peo-
ple, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times
when the State is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain
to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.
The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear
reason for the fact that it comes to all men naturally,— though
some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to man-
kind, and also tends to show that it is no less inconsistent and
variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses,
and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger,
and deceit; since it springs not from reason, but solely from the
more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, we may readily
understand how difficult it is to maintain in the same course
men prone to every form of credulity. For as the mass of man-
kind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never
assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by
a novelty which has not yet proved illusive.
This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many
terrible wars and revolutions; for as Curtius well says (Lib. iv. ,
Chap. 10), "The mob has no ruler more potent than supersti-
tion," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to
adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them
as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore
been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether
true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it may rise
superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious
reverence by the whole people; a system which has been brought
to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even contro-
versy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas.
that they leave no room for sound reason,- not even enough to
doubt with.
―――――
-
## p. 13803 (#637) ##########################################
BENEDICT SPINOZA
13803
But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mys-
tery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear which
keeps them down with the specious garb of religion, so that men
may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not
shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for
the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free State no more mischiev-
ous expedient could be planned or attempted. Wholly repug-
nant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's
minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any
of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions.
only spring up when law enters the domain of speculative
thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the
same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them
are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred
and cruelty. If deeds only could be made the grounds of crimi-
nal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such
seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification,
and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and
fast line.
Now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a
republic, where every one's judgment is free and unshackled,
where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and
where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I
have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or un-
profitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom
be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also that
without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace
be secure.
Such is the chief conclusion I seek to establish in this treatise:
but in order to reach it, I must first point out the misconceptions
which, like scars of our former bondage, still disfigure our notion
of religion; and must expose the false views about the civil
authority which many have most imprudently advocated, endeavor-
ing to turn the mind of the people, still prone to heathen super-
stition, away from its legitimate rulers, and so bring us again
into slavery. As to the order of my treatise I will speak pres-
ently; but first I will recount the causes which led me to write.
I have often wondered that persons who make a boast of
professing the Christian religion - namely, love, joy, peace, tem-
perance, and charity to all men - should quarrel with such rancor-
ous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter
-
## p. 13804 (#638) ##########################################
13804
BENEDICT SPINOZA
hatred; that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readi-
est criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come to
such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man Christian, Turk,
Jew, or heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his
frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the
phraseology of a particular sect; as for manner of life, it is in
all cases the same. Inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads
me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact that the ministries of
the Church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her
offices as posts of emolument,-in short, popular religion may be
summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this mis-
conception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire
to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's reli-
gion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church
became a theatre, where orators instead of church teachers ha-
rangued; caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract
admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach
only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of
their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up
an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of
time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the
old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these,
in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adora-
tion of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound
of credulity and prejudices,—aye, prejudices too which degrade
man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the
power of judgment between true and false, which seem in fact
carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark
of reason! Piety-great God! - and religion are become a tis-
sue of ridiculous mysteries: men who flatly despise reason, who
reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt,
these I say, these of all men, are thought-oh, lie most horrible!
-to possess light from on high. Verily, if they had but one spark
of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would
learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked
among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice: if
they were concerned for their opponents' souls instead of for
their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute,
but rather be filled with pity and compassion.
## p. 13805 (#639) ##########################################
13805
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
(1835-)
HE work of Harriet Prescott Spofford possesses to a high de-
gree the quality of distinction. About her prose and her
verse is the atmosphere of spiritual aristocracy, of rarity,
as of that which emanates from one elect in mind and soul; yet this
refinement of vision in no sense implies coldness. Mrs. Spofford,
like Pater, combines an almost austere spirituality with the warm
sensuousness of the artist, who lives in full and blissful consciousness
of color and light and form. These characteristics receive their
completest expression in her greatest short
story, The Amber Gods. ' Seldom or never
has the appreciation of the imperiousness of
the senses been blended so perfectly with
the recognition of the authority of the soul.
These two elements, of flesh and of spirit,
are again fused in 'In Titian's Garden,' a
poem itself like some great flower.
A New England Puritan by descent,
Harriet Prescott was born in Calais, Maine,
April 3d, 1835. During her childhood the
family removed to the quaint old coast-town
of Newburyport, Massachusetts, where her
early girlhood passed, and where she at-
tended school,-her unfolding genius attract-
ing the attention of T. W. Higginson, who, now widely known as a
distinguished man of letters, was at that time a clergyman and the
young girl's pastor. It is related that when she sent to the Atlantic
Monthly her first contribution, -a brilliant and subtle study of French
life, called 'In a Cellar,'- the editor wrote to Newburyport for an
assurance that this ingenious tale of love and diplomacy was not a
translation from some French master of the short story; and that
Mr. Higginson cheerfully gave the necessary guarantee of good faith,
adding that the young author had never been out of New England,
and that her brilliant Paris was a city of the imagination. At twenty
she had finished a romance, 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; and she was only a
year or two older when 'The Amber Gods' appeared in the Atlantic.
The sustained strength, intense dramatic movement, psychic percep-
tion, and rich vocabulary, so prodigally displayed therein, became the
HARRIET SPOFFORD
## p. 13806 (#640) ##########################################
13806
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
obvious characteristics of her later work. If she has done many
other things as well, during a long and scarcely interrupted literary
career, she has done nothing better. Her fiction is characterized not
alone by opulent style, mastery of plot, charm of quick transition
from the gay to the sad, from the tragic to the comic, by skill in
dialogue and management of climax; but by that quality of distinc-
tion already spoken of. Moreover, in every-day themes of every-day
existence she has the happy art of transfiguring the commonplace.
Among her stories of greater length than the ordinary maga-
zine sketch are 'Sir Rohan's Ghost'; 'The Thief in the Night'; 'The
Master-Spirit,' which reveals a deep knowledge of the history of
music and comprehension of its divine language; and The Inherit-
ance,' which deals both keenly and tenderly with an appalling prob-
lem of human destiny.
In 1865 Miss Prescott married Mr. Richard Spofford; a brilliant
young lawyer of the Massachusetts bar, whose literary tastes and cul-
tivated critical judgment encouraged her gifts to a fine and constant
flowering.
Mrs. Spofford's published volumes are seventeen in all, among
them several volumes of poems and ballads; the last, 'In Titian's
Garden,' displaying the rich maturity of her powers,—for it is in
poetry that her mind finds its fullest expression. Her literary mas-
ters have been Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning.
As an essayist, and a writer of forcible editorials on current events,
she has great skill; having the courage of her convictions, and a
manner at once energetic, sincere, and winning. She takes first rank
among American women of letters, because she possesses the entire
range of the artist,-the domain of the seen and the domain of the
unseen.
[By permission of Mr. John Brisben Walker, editor of The Cosmopolitan. ']
THE GODMOTHERS
THE
HEY were all bidden to the christening, all the godmothers-
if by good hap none had been forgotten.
And of course they came. The christening of a L'Aigle-
noir Franche du Roy was no mean occasion, under the circum-
stances, but one to which the family must do honor, if they
hastened from the ends of the earth-and beyond.
They did not arrive with the stir befitting L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But that might be because of the inborn
gentilesse which taught them the proprieties of the sick-room.
The young mother, as she lay in the dim vast chamber of the
## p. 13807 (#641) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13807
old castle, hearing the cry of the wind over the cold Atlantic,
saw them come in singly, and in groups, and at intervals. Very
faint and weak, and with some awe in her soul before the new
being she had evoked, perhaps she dropped asleep in the space of
time between their coming; for when she opened her startled
eyes, another was appearing.
At first Rosomond did not comprehend it. She felt annoyed
at the intrusion. She turned her eyes to the place where the
bassinet swung under its laces; the pair of candles in the wall
sconce behind it making that the sole spot of light in the long
room full of shadows, where lay the little morsel of life for
which she had so nearly surrendered her own, and toward which
her heart swelled with a sense of infinite dearness.
«Do not,
do not touch him! " she murmured apprehensively to the woman
bending there with her purples sweeping about her, and the
glitter of her diamonds like dagger-points.
And then the plumed and coroneted woman had disappeared
behind a curtain into the recesses of the deep casements, perhaps;
and the young countess closed her eyes forgetfully.
"Yes," she was saying to herself, when with a little flutter
her lids opened again, some time afterwards, "that is the old
countess who brought the Franche du Roy lands to the L'Aigle-
noirs. It is her portrait that hangs high next the oriel in the
sea-gallery. I could never satisfy myself, as I walked there in
the late afternoons, if it were a shadow of the carved ceiling on
her forehead, or a stain that had come out. The stain is there
She was a king's favorite.
now.
"Do not touch my little innocent child! " she cried suddenly,
rising on one arm. Did her senses deceive her? Did she hear
the woman answer, "But it is my child too! "
And a shudder seized her as suddenly: that woman's blood ran
in her child's veins! Ah, if she knew just where, she would let
it out this minute! And then she fell back, laughing at herself.
There were others in the room when her gaze again wandered
down its length. Oh, yes, she had seen them all before. Had
they stepped from their frames in the long sea-gallery?
The beautiful young being in the white brocade sown with
violets, the band of brilliants in her red-gold hair, mother of the
count's father, she who later had rivaled Eugénie in Eugénie's
court,-Eugénie, who had the resources of an empire, and the
L'Aiglenoirs had nothing,-yet, ah no, it was empty sound, the
## p. 13808 (#642) ##########################################
13808
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
scandal that those resplendent toilets were a part of the bribes of
senators. She who was a Bourbon D'Archambeau! Nor would
Rosomond believe the rumor concerning moneys obtained by the
dexterous writing of great officials' names-forgery, counterfeit,
what you will-by that other laughing lovely thing, a wife out
of the convent, a mother at sixteen, the last countess, launched
upon life without a scruple or a sou, who loved pleasure so pas-
sionately that she came to live at last upon chloral and opium,
and died dancing.
She had often silently made friends with these captivating
young women, when unable to go out, and during her lonely
pacing up and down the length of the sea-gallery, with the low
roar of the surge in her ears; while her husband, who had
brought her down here with a loving fancy that his child might
be born in the ancestral stronghold which some of her own mil-
lions were restoring to its ancient grandeur, was away on the
water, or in the hunt, or perhaps at the races.
She would not think ill of them now: they alone of all the
women on the wall had not seemed to think ill of her, to look
at her as a parvenu and an interloper; had seemed to have about
them something of the spirit of the century, to have breathed air
she breathed herself.
It was natural that the last countess, the pretty piquant creat-
ure, should have loved splendid gowns; -kept in homespun all
the earlier days by her father's mother, the old marchioness,-
the miser whose hands grew yellow counting her gold. Tante
Alixe had told Rosomond of it. There she was now,- the old
marchioness,-gasping for more air, but just as she was painted
in her dusky robes; with the long ivory hands like the talons of
a bird of prey,—the talons of a L'Aiglenoir,- mumbling of the
revenue she had wrung from her peasants, who starved on black
bread to buy of her the privilege of living.
Perhaps it was thought she had that privilege too long her-
self. She had died suddenly-very suddenly. Her son, the
marquis, was a partisan and a man of power: a great deal of
gold was needed in the intrigues concerning the two kings.
And here was another who had died suddenly-but in the
open air.
There was a red line round her slender throat, too
dull for the ruby necklace she wore in the portrait in the panel;
the tall, fair aristocrat whose long white throat, alas! had felt
the swift kiss of the guillotine's blade. There was not the look
## p. 13809 (#643) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13809
of hate and horror in the portrait that was on her face now;
only the languor of many pleasures there, the proud and insolent
indifference to the pain, the want, the suffering, from which those
pleasures had been pressed like wine that left the must.
"The canaille," she seemed to say,-"they die? so much the
less vermin. They suffer? and what of it? ""
>>>>
Her husband had told Rosomond when he first led her down
the long sea-gallery, the story of this proud lady who thought
the world made only for her class. It had passed the idle hour:
Rosomond had not thought of it again. He had told her all
their stories, that of the strangely wrinkled old baroness, with
her eyes like sparks of fire in the midst of ashes, once herself
blooming and fair to see, who had kept the keys of the king's
hunting-lodge, and provided for his pleasures there. "Well, yes,'
the young count had said, "but what will you have? She was
no worse than her time. They were infamous times. " He had
told her of that blue-eyed waxen woman painted in the Sir Peter
Lely, a beauty who had followed the fortunes of Charles Stuart
into France, very like, but who had come into the L'Aiglenoir
family later by the church door; of the Vandyke,- the blonde
devotee who went over with La Reine Henriette, and came to a
madhouse at last; of the Antonio Moro, vanishing in her golden-
brown shadows,—an attendant of the English Mary, a confidante
of Philip of Spain, who had read her missal at an auto da fé; of
the Rubens, the half-clad woman like an overblown rose, a great
red rose with the sun on its velvet and dewy petals; —if face and
frame spoke for her, a woman who was only an embodied sin;-
of the Holbein,- a creature whose appetites had devoured her
and left themselves only on the canvas; of the possible Titian—
"See the gold of her hair," said the count. "It was dyed. But
all the same, Titian-it must have been Titian-knew how to
hide the sun in every strand. What a lustre of skin! What a
bloom on the cheek. it never blushed with shame. What a lus-
cious lip-it knew forbidden kisses, it denounced a brother to
the Ten. What a glory in the eye-yet if all traditions are true,
that eye saw a lover disappear as the gondola touched the deep
water that tells no tales. See the hand: what contour, what fine-
ness, what delicacy-and the life in it! But it knew how to
play with a poniard whose tip was touched with poison. She did
her little best to betray Venice for a price; and she had to leave
with the French army, of course. "
XXIII-864
-
―――――――――
――――――
## p. 13810 (#644) ##########################################
13810
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
"I should think you would be glad it is all only tradition,"
Rosomond had said.
"I don't know. You see the king gave her a duchy, and
she brought it into the family. The title lapsed, to be sure; and
the revenues went long ago in gaming debts. Do you note that
damsel in the white satin,- the Geraart Terburg? Her face is
like a live pearl. Well, she was the stake once in some high
play. "
That would have been dreadful if it were true. "
"As you please," said the count with a shrug.
"And were there no good women, no honorable men? "
"Oh, but plenty! But, ma chérie, happiness has no history,
virtue has few adventures. Their portraits fade out on the wall
as they themselves do in the line. It is the big wills, the big
passions, that are memorable- that drown out those others, the
weak, that have made the L'Aiglenoirs what they are. Those
imbeciles, they are like René's father the day of his burial,
'as if he had never existed. " And he went on with his narrative.
-
"But it is a gallery! If we had it at home, and - pardon-
reckoned its commercial value — »
"Alas! The pictures are no more certified than the traditions!
And then, one does not willingly part with one's people. Yet -
if that were indeed a Titian- »
"You would not have gone over to America to marry me. "
"I should not perhaps have gone over to America to marry
the heiress of the New World, repeating the adventures of the
knights of long ago, but in modern dress. I should have had no
need. But I would have married you, Rosomond, had I met you
on the dark side of the moon, or else have flung myself headlong
into space! "
"You forget the attraction of gravitation. "
"Your attraction is the greater. "
"Now I do not believe you. The language of hyperbole is
not the language of truth. "
―――――――――――
"Pleasantry aside, you must always believe I speak truth, my
wife, when I say that whatever led me in the beginning, it is
love that overcame me in the end. I could not perhaps have
married, I who love pleasure too,-if you had not been the
daughter of Dives. For we were beggared-we poor L'Aiglenoir
Franche du Roys. But the thing being made possible, I simply
entered heaven, Rosomond! ”
## p. 13811 (#645) ##########################################
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13811
"And I," said Rosomond, as she stood in the deep window-
place, looking up at him a moment, and back again swiftly to
the sea.
"And if it were a title against a fortune, as Newport said,
and as the Faubourg held a matter of course-although Heaven
knows a title means nothing now, and will not till the King-the
good God have his Majesty in keeping! —is at home again — »
"Oh, let us forget all that, fortune or title! " Rosomond had
said.
"No; no. For if the fortune arrive to repair the fortunes of
the house of L'Aiglenoir, why not? It is your house, Rosomond.
It is the house of your child. And we will make a new house
of it. The L'Aiglenoir of the twentieth century shall again be
the prime minister of the King of France. The new blood, the
new gold, shall make new fortunes, shall bring back the old
force and will and power; and we will leave these dusty memo-
ries behind, and ask no one of them to the christening! "
«< Perhaps so," Rosomond had said, half under her breath.
"But you have been a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving people,” she
added presently. "And with rank, with wealth, with opportunity
- it does not tend to bring back the old brute strength. "
"Well, then," the count lightly answered her, "let us take
some of the pleasure! See, how purple is the water beyond the
white lip on the reefs. We will go try the outer sea, and drift
an hour or two in the soft wind. And I will tell you how beau-
tiful you are, ma belle Américaine, and you shall tell me what
a sailor I am. It is not the sailing of the old sea-robber who
came down here to assault the castle in the days of that grand-
mother of mine twenty times removed, in the days of La Dame
Blanche, to take her with her belongings and marry her by
storm - but it is pleasanter, my sweet. "
-
That had been in the bright spring months. Now autumn
winds swept the Atlantic, and cried in the tops of the ragged
pines below the castle's cliff. Many a day had Rosomond sat
there, listening for the sea measures, and fancying the beat of
the surf was the washing of the wave under the keel that car-
ried Tristan and Isolde, a thousand years ago and more, on the
waters just beyond; heard the very music of Isolde's wild lament;
watched for the white sail across the reef as if the sick knight
lay in the court-yard within under the linden-tree, in all the
## p. 13812 (#646) ##########################################
13812-
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
pathos of song and beauty and tragic fate; felt herself taken
into a world of romance, where the murmuring of the breeze
in the bough was the murmur of the skirts of the great forest of
Broceliande.
But this had nothing to do with romance now. She lay in
bed, with her little child near at hand,—the attendants just with-
out,-in the tower chamber where for generations the L'Aigle-
noirs had been born.
Through the deep windows she saw the swift-flying moon
touch the clouds sweeping in the wind, and light the swale on
the dark and lifted sea beyond; look in and now and again silver
the faces of the paladins and maidens in the pale blue-green
forest of the old tapestry, that slightly rippled and rose and fell,
as if with a consciousness of the windy gust that sung outside
the tower. It was that old paladin with the truncheon — a
paladin of Charlemagne's-from whom the Franche du Roys
counted. It was the châtelaine with the flagon that gave him his
quietus.
What did it all mean, though, at this moment? With the
heavy swaying of the tapestry, had these people by any chance.
left their silken shroud and come out into the room to look at
the child?
Not the twelve white-faced nuns; not the featureless young
squires and dames: but that old châtelaine of whose needle-
wrought semblance she had always been half afraid,-who car-
ried the golden flagon and gave the knight to drink, perhaps for
sleep, perhaps for death. Yes, that was she; but she had left
her majesty in the hangings, with her veil and horned head-
piece, her trailing samite and cloth of gold of cramoisie. Here,
with her thin gray tattered locks, pallid, pinched, and shrunken,
white as some reptile blanched beneath a stone, what was she to
be afraid of now? But this other-"Once the place was mine,
mine and my love's! " she was exclaiming. "Till the sea dark-
ened with their gilded prows, the sky darkened with their bitter
arrows! " Ah, yes, how many hundreds of years ago it was since
she defended the castle after a lance-head laid her lord low; and
the sea-rover had scaled the heights and taken her, loathing and
hating him, to wife. And from them had been born the line of
the L'Aiglenoirs!
And what was she doing here? What were they all doing
here, these women? What right had they in her room? Why
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HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
13813
were they looking with such ardent and eager eyes, murmuring
among themselves, hurrying past one another toward the child?
"Give way! " was La Dame Blanche exclaiming. "I was the
first. "
"Après moi," said the laughing lady, flittering along in her
butterfly gauzes, the diamonds in her tiara flashing out and
reluming again. "I am the last. "
"If so false a thing ever existed at all," said the woman with
the mass-book, or was it a book of jests? -the Flemish woman
who sold her daughter for a tulip.
"I give you my word I existed! " was the gay reply.
"Under your own signature? " asked the pretty patched and
powdered Watteau.
-
"Never mind whose signature. "
"Worthless," murmured a lady, lifting her black lace mask
from features sharp as a death's-head, and of a tint as wan as
the tints of a Boucher design,—“worthless in any event. "
"Ah, madame, from you to me? I was but your natural con-
sequence, you Voltairiennes, as you were all born on the night of
St. Bartholomew! "
"Its tocsin still rings in the air! I am condemned ever to
hear the boom of the bell," complained the dark person with the
rosary.
And then the laughing lady twitched her beads; and there fell
out from her sleeve the perfumed fan whose breath was fever,
the gloves whose palms were deadly, brought with her Medicean.
mistress from Italy.
"A truce! ” cried the gay lady. "The birth of an heir to the
L'Aiglenoir Franche du Roys, with wealth to restore the ancient
splendor, is an event for due ceremony and precedence. I am
the child's grandmother, his very next of kin among us. And
you know the rights of the grandmother in France. "
«< They are our rights! " came a shrill multitudinous murmur.
"We all are grandmothers! "
"Are we all here ? " came a hollow whisper from the châte-
laine, the candlelight flickering in her flagon.
"All the fairy godmothers? " cried the gay lady.
"No, no," said La Dame Blanche: "there is one who has been
forgotten. "
"The wicked fairy," said the gay lady. "The rest of us are
of such a virtue. He will value us like his other objets de vertu. »
## p. 13814 (#648) ##########################################
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HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
A COLD shiver coursed over Rosomond, but her eyes burned
with the intensity of her gaze. She understood it now. He was
the child of their blood. That was why they were here, why
they intruded themselves into her room. They had a right. It
had been their own room. For how many generations had the
L'Aiglenoirs been born in this room! She had never thought of
this when she sailed so gayly out of harbor, a bride with her
bridegroom, wearing his title, protected by his arm, so proud,
so glad, so happy that she had the wealth he needed, all that
so trifling beside the fact that they loved each other. She had
never dreamed of the little child to come, who would be dearer
than her life to her, and in whose veins must run a black drop
of the blood of all these creatures.
-
And now-oh, was there no remedy? Was there nothing
to counteract it, nothing to dissipate that black drop, to make
it colorless, powerless, harmless, a thing of air? Were there no
sweet, good people among all those dead and gone women?
Ah, yes, indeed, there they were! Far off, by the curtain of
the doorway, huddled together like a flock of frightened doves:
gentle ladies, quiet, timid, humble before heaven; ladies of placid
lives, no opportunities, small emotions, narrow routine; praying
by form, acting by precedent, without individuality; whose good-
ness was negative, whose doings were paltry; their poor drab be-
ings swamped and drowned and extinguished in the purples and
scarlets of these women of great passions, of scope, of daring
and deed and electric force, mates of men of force, whose posi-
tion had called crime to its aid, whose very crimes had enlarged
them, whose sins were things of power, strengthening their per-
sonality if but for evil, transmitting their potentiality—oh, no,
these gentle ladies signified nothing here!
A cold dew bathed Rosomond and beaded her brow. But
were the L'Aiglenoirs and their order all there were? Where
were her own people? Had they no right in the child? Could
they not cross the seas? Was there no requiting strength
among them? None in the mother of her father,―king of rail-
roads and mines and vast southwestern territory,-that stern,
repressed woman, who had spared and starved and saved to start.
her son in life? "Come! " cried Rosomond. "Come, my own
people! Oh, I need you now, I and my child! "
But among all these splendid dames of quality, accustomed to
wide outlook on the world, and a part of the events of nations,
## p.
