within
limits permitted to the former ecclesiastical "schoolmen," it did
prevent his frank realization of the eternal oneness of all being. For
it compelled him to retain belief in a Creator distinct in essence from
Creation. Such a belief Spinoza entirely rejected. For though his
"Natura Naturans," or Nature Active, may in a manner be called the
Creator of his "Natura Naturata," or Nature Passive, these are
consubstantial and co-eternal, neither being before or after the other.
Thus for him there was no beginning of the Universe and there could be
no end. There was no creation out of nothing, nor any omen of weariness,
decay, or death in the eternal order. He teaches us in effect to take
the Universe as it is, and to pry into no supposed secrets of origin or
end, an entirely gratuitous labour, imposed by illusions arising out of
the continuous redistribution of parts of the Whole. Instead of thus
spending our mental energy for nought, he would have us regard the whole
of Being as one Substance characterized by innumerable attributes, of
which Extension and Thought alone come within our human cognizance;
while each Attribute is subject to infinite Modes or modifications,
which, in their effect on the two attributes known to us--extension and
thought--constitute the universe of our experience. That infinite and
eternal Substance revealed by Attributes and their Modes is God,
absolute in His perfections if He could be fully conceived and known in
all His activities. And even to our ignorance He is entrancing in His
gradual self-revelation, as with our inadequate ideas we pursue the
unattainable from glory to glory.

[Sidenote: This View of the Universe applied to Psalm civ.]

This, then, is the first note we make of the gospel of Spinoza. But if
any one thinks that the sacred word "gospel" is here misused, and that
such teaching is fatal to piety, let him turn to the 104th Psalm and
read, from Spinoza's point of view, the cosmic vision of the Hebrew
seer. True, we can think no longer of the supernatural carpenter who
works on "the beams of his chambers" above, or of the mythical engineer
who digs deep in the darkness to "lay the foundations of the earth." For
that is poetry, appealing by concrete images to the emotions. But it
does not bind the intellect to a literal interpretation; and we are no
longer tormented by vain efforts to reconcile with infinite
impossibilities the half-human personality presented in poetic gu