Pages from a Journal with Other Papers | Page 7

watch it, but to hope for a
surprise. The grass became brown, and in many places was killed down
to the roots; there was no hay; myriads of swarming caterpillars
devoured the fruit trees; the brooks were all dry; water for cattle had to
be fetched from ponds and springs miles away; the roads were broken
up; the air was loaded with grit; and the beautiful green of the hedges
was choked with dust. Birds like the rook, which fed upon worms, were
nearly starved, and were driven far and wide for strange food. It was
pitiable to see them trying to pick the soil of the meadow as hard as a
rock. The everlasting glare was worse than the gloom of winter, and the
sense of universal parching thirst became so distressing that the house
was preferred to the fields. We were close to a water famine! The
Atlantic, the source of all life, was asleep, and what if it should never
wake! We know not its ways, it mocks all our science. Close to us lies
this great mystery, incomprehensible, and yet our very breath depends
upon it. Why should not the sweet tides of soft moist air cease to
stream in upon us? No reason could be given why every green herb and
living thing should not perish; no reason, save a faith which was blind.
For aught we KNEW, the ocean-begotten aerial current might forsake
the land and it might become a desert.
One night grey bars appeared in the western sky, but they had too often
deluded us, and we did not believe in them. On this particular evening
they were a little heavier, and the window-cords were damp. The air
which came across the cliff was cool, and if we had dared to hope we
should have said it had a scent of the sea in it. At four o'clock in the
morning there was a noise of something beating against the panes--
they were streaming! It was impossible to lie still, and I rose and went
out of doors. No creature was stirring, there was no sound save that of

the rain, but a busier time there had not been for many a long month.
Thousands of millions of blades of grass and corn were eagerly
drinking. For sixteen hours the downpour continued, and when it was
dusk I again went out. The watercourses by the side of the roads had a
little water in them, but not a drop had reached those at the edge of the
fields, so thirsty was the earth. The drought, thank God, was at an end!

SPINOZA

Now that twenty years have passed since I began the study of Spinoza
it is good to find that he still holds his ground. Much in him remains
obscure, but there is enough which is sufficiently clear to give a
direction to thought and to modify action. To the professional
metaphysician Spinoza's work is already surpassed, and is absorbed in
subsequent systems. We are told to read him once because he is
historically interesting, and then we are supposed to have done with
him. But if "Spinozism," as it is called, is but a stage of development
there is something in Spinoza which can be superseded as little as the
Imitation of Christ or the Pilgrim's Progress, and it is this which
continues to draw men to him. Goethe never cared for set philosophical
systems. Very early in life he thought he had found out that they were
useless pieces of construction, but to the end of his days he clung to
Spinoza, and Philina, of all persons in the world, repeats one of the
finest sayings in the Ethic. So far as the metaphysicians are carpenters,
and there is much carpentering in most of them, Goethe was right, and
the larger part of their industry endures wind and weather but for a
short time. Spinoza's object was not to make a scheme of the universe.
He felt that the things on which men usually set their hearts give no
permanent satisfaction, and he cast about for some means by which to
secure "a joy continuous and supreme to all eternity." I propose now,
without attempting to connect or contrast Spinoza with Descartes or the
Germans, to name some of those thoughts in his books by which he
conceived he had attained his end.
The sorrow of life is the rigidity of the material universe in which we

are placed. We are bound by physical laws, and there is a constant
pressure of matter-of-fact evidence to prove that we are nothing but
common and cheap products of the earth to which in a few moments or
years we return. Spinoza's chief aim is to free us from this sorrow, and