Part 15

Nowadays Spinoza’s pantheism suggests to scientific men the mighty forces that lie locked up within the atom.[29] So far as we know, the universe, however vast it may be, is, in the last resource, composed of atoms. But once again, and fifty times over, I would most strenuously say that pantheism is a philosophy: it is _not_ a religion. It is too stern, too scientific, too consistent with known facts, ever to attract the countless bruised hearts, relics of the late war, longing for comfort in their grief.

Even otherwise intelligent men often ask me whether the _Religio Medici_ of Sir Thomas Browne really represents the religion of modern doctors. The nearest approach to a talk about religion I have ever heard from a doctor was once when I heard one doctor say of another that he was believed to pray for his patients; but in that I seem to scent a savour of professional jealousy. Otherwise I might almost feel justified in saying that _Religio Medici_ is generally considered by doctors to be a farrago of quackery, mysticism, credulity, and astrology, put into gorgeous and quite unnecessarily obscure language; full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. Probably Browne was unconsciously remembering the teachings of some old lady who had impressed the truth upon him in his early infancy—probably with her slipper.

But I cannot close this essay upon the greatest of all philosophers better than by repeating the words of Ernest Renan upon him when they dedicated the great statue at The Hague in 1882: “Woe unto him who in passing should hurl an insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished, as all vulgar souls are punished, by his own vulgarity, and by his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man from his granite pedestal will point out to all men the way of blessedness which he had found; and ages hence the cultivated traveller, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, ‘The truest vision man ever had of God, came perhaps, here.’”

Nor can one do better than follow Spinoza so far as earthly intelligence can lead us. Those people whose hearts the war has left bruised and broken are fortunate if they can still believe what they learned at their mother’s knee. She, dear, simple, lovable soul, knew nothing about the unconscious mind, nor physiology, nor historical criticism, nor Spinoza and his majestic pantheism. All she knew was that her sons were unhappy, and she must comfort them as best she could. Men have always been unhappy, and women have always tried to comfort them according to their sons’ needs. All good men have the same religion, and they have all learned it at their mother’s knee.[30]

Of all the philosophers who have tried to solve the awful mystery of the Infinite God, Baruch Spinoza probably came as near to it as He will ever allow.

But man must work out his own salvation, and it is not right to blame the infinite God if anything fails to happen as we desire. “Let us still cultivate our garden.”

THE END

FOOTNOTES

[1] There are innumerable English synonyms for psychasthenic, mostly slang. A few are unbalanced, half-crazy, half-cracked, half-dotty, peculiar, queer, etc. But none of these expresses the exact meaning of the Greek; indeed, it is impossible absolutely to escape from medical jargon, except by a phrase.

[2] Probably it was the clinical type with stupor, in which grief and the sense of sin become so overwhelming that the patient can hardly move.

[3] According to Professor J. J. Welsh many ointments in use at the time contained mercury.

[4] In cases resembling nymphomania that occur after childbirth we call it puerperal insanity.

[5] The title was only recent. Formerly he had been called “His Grace.”

[6] See how neurotic he was at the time!

[7] Please note that “sex” does _not_ mean “sensuality.”

[8] These postulates are:

(_a_) Her supposed deformity must have been such as would allow her terrible father and her anxious mother to accept her as a daughter, although they both desperately longed for a son and heir.

(_b_) It must have been such as would have been known to herself.

(_c_) It could not have interfered with the ordinary physiological processes of her life.

(_d_) It must have been such as would not interfere with her living in at least tolerable health to the age of sixty-nine.

[9] If it is a science.

[10] Please do not look upon this as a diagnosis; all we say positively is that the spirochæte must have affected his mind.

[11] _British Medical Journal_, 1910.

[12] Some say sixteen.

[13] Much the same libels on Catherine’s physical condition were spread about her as had already been said about Elizabeth.

[14] Macaulay makes such fun of the poor doctors, with many sensational adjectives, but I shall not reprint it here.

[15] A Freudian would say that Frederick’s dirtiness simply represented an unconscious revolt against the tyranny of his father.

[16] Probably he was some crazy fellow of the minor clergy. The whole world seems to have gone mad at this time; it only shows us what the Crusades really meant to Europe.

[17] _Plague and Pestilence in Art and Literature_, by Raymond Crawfurd.

[18] Friedlander, taking his account of it entirely from Galen, considered it to have been “petechial typhus,” or smallpox. The sanitary condition of Rome must have been perfectly frightful, and to read Friedlander makes one shudder.

[19] Probably Mus Rattus, the black rat, at that time. Mus decumanus, the brown rat, does not seem to have begun to conquer the black rat till the eighteenth century.

[20] _Epidemics of the Middle Ages._

[21] Of course this mainly refers to the poor. It is said that the serfs deforested Europe in order that their betters might have a weekly hot bath.

[22] The question of the first appearance of syphilis in Europe appears to have been settled by an article in the _St. Louis Urological and Cutaneous Review_ for 1924.

[23] Probably, like so many leaders of thought, Nietzsche was of the manic-depressive temperament, with all the apparently insane egotism of that temperament.

[24] It reminds one of Beethoven and the rice pudding, and of Henry VIII and his loving subjects. But, whereas Henry, being a law-abiding, even though impetuous, sovereign, was able to satisfy his obsessions by due process of law, Schopenhauer and Beethoven had to take the matter into their own forthright hands. And yet they say that the world did not improve in those 300 years.

[25] Probably he was thinking of gonorrhœal ophthalmia, and dreading lest he catch it by the unconventional way of a bath. No doubt somebody had warned him against the dangers of the towel. He was full of quaint ideas about infection. He must have walked in a maze of ghosts due to his syphilophobia.

[26] I hate to remind the world of the ancient slander—

A woman, a dog, and a crab-apple tree, The more you thrash ’em the better they be.

[27] Similarly Freud’s use of the term “sex” has been much misunderstood. It does not mean sensuality. In man it has been so sublimated as to come nearer to pity and love than to mere brute instinct.

[28] So far as we know we invariably become unconscious before we die; it seems to be exactly like falling asleep.

[29] Or rather perhaps the infinite forces of the universe _as grasped by the mind of man_.

[30] Of course because religion and science have nothing whatever to do with each other. Religion is an emotion comparable to pity and love—that is, to sex. Science is the observation of phenomena, which religion sometimes unwisely tries to solve by transcendental explanations.