entia non
mortis, sed vitae meditatio est (_Ethic_, Part IV., Prop. LXVII.)--when
he wrote that, he felt, as we all feel, that we are slaves, and he did
in fact think about death, and he wrote it in a vain endeavour to free
himself from this thought. Nor in writing Proposition XLII. of Part V.,
that "happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself," did he
feel, one may be sure, what he wrote. For this is usually the reason why
men philosophize--in order to convince themselves, even though they fail
in the attempt. And this desire of convincing oneself--that is to say,
this desire of doing violence to one's own human nature--is the real
starting-point of not a few philosophies.

Whence do I come and whence comes the world in which and by which I
live? Whither do I go and whither goes everything that environs me? What
does it all mean? Such are the questions that man asks as soon as he
frees himself from the brutalizing necessity of labouring for his
material sustenance. And if we look closely, we shall see that beneath
these questions lies the wish to know not so much the "why" as the
"wherefore," not the cause but the end. Cicero's definition of
philosophy is well known--"the knowledge of things divine and human and
of the causes in which these things are contained," _rerum divinarum et
humanarum, causarumque quibus hae res continentur_; but in reality these
causes are, for us, ends. And what is the Supreme Cause, God, but the
Supreme End? The "why" interests us only in view of the "wherefore." We
wish to know whence we came only in order the better to be able to
ascertain whither we are going.

This Ciceronian definition, which is the Stoic definition, is also found
in that formidable intellectualist, Clement of Alexandria, who was
canonized by the Catholic Church, and he expounds it in the fifth
chapter of the first of his _Stromata_. But this same Christian
philosopher--Christian?--in the twenty-second chapter of his fourth
_Stroma_ tells us that for the gnostic--that is to say, the
intellectual--knowledge, _gnosis_, ought to suffice, and he adds: "I
will dare aver that it is not because he wishes to be saved that he, who
devotes himself to knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself,
chooses knowledge. For the exertion of the intellect by exercise is
prolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of the
intellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from an
uninterr