science. And it is also acknowledged, except in the recent ranks
of superstition, that man is a part of Nature, not independent of it.

Man's connection with Nature is, in Spinoza's system, at least as
intimate as it is in the latest system of natural science. The original
doctrine of the origin of species, Spinoza would have found entirely in
harmony with his general philosophy, although what he would have thought
of subsequent evolutionary extravaganzas, it is impossible to say.
Darwinian biology made man consubstantial with the animal kingdom;
Spinoza's metaphysics makes man's body consubstantial with the infinite
attribute of extension or matter, and his mind consubstantial with the
infinite attribute of thought which is the mind of Nature or God. Man,
as a "mode" of extension and thought, is necessarily subject to the laws
of these two attributes of which he is compounded. The fundamental
relation of man to the universe, set forth in the Bible, is radically
transformed. Man is no longer an only child of God, enjoying his
privileges and protection (occasionally tempered by inexperienced
punishments); he is a mode of two attributes of substance inexorably
determined by their universal, immutable laws.

V

Of all the laws of the universe, it was Spinoza's chief object to discover
the mental laws. That there were such laws his metaphysics assured him;
and the existence to-day of a science of psychology substantiates his
belief. The most popular of recent psychologies--Freudianism--is based
upon the principle that nothing whatever happens in the mental life of
man, waking or asleep, that is not specifically determined by
ascertainable causes. Psychoanalytic therapy would be impossible
otherwise. Psychiatry, too, has conclusively demonstrated that only
metaphorically is the subject matter it deals with in the region of the
"abnormal." Actually, the insane are subject to laws of behavior which can
be scientifically studied no less than the sane. They are no more
possessed of an evil, designing spirit, as our witch-burning ancestors
consistently believed, than the ordinary human being is possessed of
"free-will."

Spinoza's psychology is dialectical. But it is no indictment of his
psychology to point out that it is. It is true, his formal definition of
sorrow, for instance, fails supremely to touch the strings of a
sympathetic heart. But the philosophical psychologist is not a novelist.
The recent claim that "litera