The life of Spinoza—
Pass over to this side all of you, fighters in this battle, ye Espritals [
Geistigen]—for you are the fighters against the powers of spiritlessness—ye Espritals, who feel the importance and the depth of life, and who experience by and in yourselves the marks of the Eternal at its foundation, those colossal marks of Art, Philosophy, and Love! Ye Esprital fighters, who at present and at all times pursue in your life and with your life one great mission of Truth; and who, in return, get your reward from mankind—pass over to this side and look at this life of Spinoza, which by itself is quite a clear manifestation of eternal Truth. Look at Spinoza when someday you feel humiliated and despondent. Remember the life of this man, how they treated him during his life; and how, after his death, at the very sound of his name, for one hundred years, not only "the theologians used to spit," but all who knew how to spit, and not least the philosophers, too. Remember the anathema which was suspended over his life: "Cursed be he during the day and cursed be he during the night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he gets up; cursed when he goes out and cursed when he comes back. God will not forgive him....We decree that nobody communicate with him by word of mouth or by writing, that nobody do him any favor, that nobody remain with him under the same roof, or nearer then four yards from him and that nobody read writings composed or written by him." And that curse whereby he had been cast out from the community of outcasts influenced the whole human race: nobody, nobody wanted, nobody dared associate his name with the name of Spinoza, for he, too, would become thereby an object of general abomination. Three generations of educated people erected for Spinoza an unparalleled monument of stigmatisation, such as was never seen before, under which they believed to have buried forever his work and his memory.—"The anger and the wrath of God will flare up against that man and God will erase his name from under heaven and will reject him unto the Evil one." This is what God has done through his men, through his educated men. Hear it all of you, who have decided yourself for truth, to fight for it all your life, listen to the way the name of the truest of all messengers of truth has been annihilated and rejected to the evil one: They changed his name Benedictus into Maledictus; they called him the Cursed, the earth has never born a more cursed being, never a viler devil as this hell-hound barking from his three throats.—They said that his mind was obscured and that his temperament was by nature lazy, sly, and insidious!—They called him a skulking author; and, on the other hand, also shameless, brazen, crazy, arrogant, fanatically ambitious, who wanted to be torn into pieces in order to become world renowned, a lying boaster who was playing the jeerer of religion and has brought into the world all those ignominies only to make his name famous. According to others he was supposedly a very ignorant, apathetic and extremely stupid man, who was incapable of understanding the difference between one and many,—The poor rascal of a Cartesiano-cabalistic somnambulist, the cabalistic charlatan, the murderer and highwayman of Common sense and of Science.—His work is so careless that it makes you disgusted!—Everything in it is rough and undigested—wrong definitions: the sterile teacher with his superficial manners, his impudence and the worst errors of logic, paradoxes, absurdities, miseries! The Ethics,
liber pestilentissimus, on account of which one has to cry shame on mankind, that such a work could have come out of it!—the miserable and immature product of an unfortunate and immature understanding—it advocates the most shocking and the most ridiculous of all hypotheses!—All that is galimatias, fiction and nonsense!—For at times he was not in his right mind!—The wretched Jew, the buffoon, the fool, who should have been put into a lunatic asylum—all he brings are the weakest and most pitiful caricatures and trifles, which shouldn't have been simply punished by admonitions, but by blows—and all his doctrines are plagiarism—the horrible doctrines which this tasteless Jewish philosopher, with your permission, has sh.. into the world!—The poisonous stinking doctrines—dunghills—the rather bestial than human heresies—that system of lies—and he himself the worst liar and hypocrite who wanted to play a decent person—a wicked sophist who, fully conscious of his malignant intentions, counterfeited in the most loathsome manner—a cunning impostor as it were (
impostor nulli secundus, veterator turpissimus), a swindler thrice, four-times branded; a miserable, spiteful creature, a knave of knaves, a worthless villain, an outcast of humanity, a loose bird, a libertine who through excess in eating and drinking and with women, contracted a phthistic consumption and finally departed in frenzy and in madness—it is reported that in his desperation he committed suicide—and even nowadays a deformed portrait of his is shown around by them, with the caption: "He carries the mark of rejection on his forehead."
Hear ye all this, ye messengers of truth, ye good militants, and remain inflexible and firm in this fight, and be even more confident and happier in your hearts than before; all this was to no purpose, all this infamy came to naught; but not a single word of truth remains fruitless! Thus you in turn may be besmirched during your lifetime and after your life and may lie a hundred years like dead hounds: all the storms and floods of destiny shall pass over your names, and then will come your own enemies and they shall be obliged to awaken your truth, so that it may live and henceforth live forever!
—Extract from
Spinoza contra Kant by Constantin Brunner
