Fortunately, this was one of the matters in which I decided to ignore his advice. Anyway, I went ahead and tried to read some philosophy by myself. People who are immersed in sensual appetites and desires are not very well prepared to handle abstract ideas. Even in the purely natural order, a certain amount of purity of heart is required before an intellect can get sufficiently detached and clear to work out the problems of metaphysics. I say a certain amount, however, because I am sure that no one needs to be a saint to be a clever metaphysician. I dare say there are plenty of metaphysicians in hell.
However, the philosophers to whom I was attracted were not the best. For the most part, I used to take their books out of libraries, and return them without ever having opened them. It was just as well. Nevertheless during the Easter vacation, when I was seventeen, I earnestly and zealously set about trying to figure out Spinoza.
I had gone to Germany, by myself as usual, for the vacation. In Cologne I had bought a big rucksack and slung it over my shoulders and started up the Rhine valley on foot, in a blue jersey and an old pair of flannel bags, so that people in the inns along the road asked me if I was a Dutch sailor off one of the river barges. In the rucksack, which was already heavy enough, I had a couple of immoral novels and the Everyman Library edition of Spinoza. Spinoza and the Rhine valley! I certainly had a fine sense of appropriateness. The two go very well together. However, I was about eighty years too late. And the only thing that was lacking was that I was not an English or American student at Heidelberg: then the mixture would have been perfect in all its mid-nineteenth century ingredients.
I picked up more, on this journey, than a few intellectual errors, half understood. Before I got to Koblenz, I had trouble in one foot. Some kind of an infection seemed to be developing under one of the toenails. But it was not especially painful, and I ignored it. However, it made walking unpleasant, and so, after going on as far as St. Goar, I gave up in disgust. Besides, the weather had turned bad, and I had got lost in the forest, trying to follow the imaginary biker's trail called the Rheinhohenweg.
I went back to Koblenz, and sat in a room over a big beer hall called the Neuer Franziskaner and continued my desultory study of Spinoza and my modern novelists. Since I understood the latter much better than the philosopher, I soon gave him up and concentrated on the novels.
After a few days, I returned to England, passing through Paris, where Pop and Bonnemaman were. There I picked up some more and even worse books, and went back to school.
I had not been back for more than a few days when I began to feel ill. At first, I thought I was only out of sorts because of the sore foot and a bad toothache, which had suddenly begun to afflict me.
Spinoza was considered one of the most radical atheist heretics of his time, although his ideas have always struck me as fully centered on a belief in God. His metaphysics is made of one thing--"Substance"--which Spinoza called "God" or "Nature." He saw the universe as simply two attributes (thought and extension) that are part of infinite divine attributes radiating from God.
Pretty heady stuff for 17-year-old Merton to get his brain around. And, not surprisingly, he fails. Thinking abstractly about God (or Nature or Substance) is no easy feat. People spend lifetimes studying, writing, and arguing about subjects like this. I, for one, took a long time in coming to any kind of understanding of Spinoza that makes sense to my views of spirituality and the natural world.
The idea of everything in the universe being an extension of God makes sense. Spinoza's universe is all divinely interconnected, one thing affecting the other, with everything playing out in a pretty deterministic way. All things occur exactly as planned. Thus, free will doesn't play a big part in the unfolding of events. (That is the part, I think, that really bugged the Catholic Church, which puts a lot of stock in human free will.)
I, for one, am not a big fan of free will. It creates too many problems. Note: I didn't say that free will doesn't exist. It does. Spinoza and I part ways here. Free will is that thing that lets people fuck up their lives in huge ways. If free will didn't exist, then marriages wouldn't fail, addiction wouldn't destroy lives, and Donald Trump wouldn't be President of the United States.
Yet, I know people who find new and creative way to break themselves daily, and, in the process, leave a trail of broken hearts in their wakes. I'm thinking of one person I know, in particular, tonight. He has been making terrible choices for a couple years, and now he is on the brink of walking out on his kids and spouse. Addiction is playing a huge part in this decision. He knows he's an addict, and he just doesn't care.
If I were Spinoza, I would say that this is exactly the way things are supposed to play out. Everything is working toward a specific end that is predetermined. I'm not Spinoza. I think that this person is being selfish, stupid, and arrogant. In short, he's choosing to be an addict over everything else in his life. And he is going to destroy the lives of everyone in his family. Especially his young son. Free will in action, folks.
Yet, where there is free will, there's always a chance for redemption. This person could turn things around before driving his car off the cliff. He could. It's possible. He's been at this point before in his life, a few times, and he's come back. The question is whether his spouse and children will accept him, forgive him, take him back. That'a big question. Free will in action again.
So, you see why I'm not a big fan of free will. It can be a curse. Hiroshima leveling a city. Or it can be a miracle. Jesus Christ rising from the tomb.
Saint Marty is hoping for a resurrection, but preparing for an apocalypse.
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