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226 called the inside of a calf his library, you have a much better. You have learned the weapons of both sides in the enemy's camp. The Jesuit school educated and inspired Descartes—the Talmud school you. What wonderful ways hath history! But you will go further yet. I see you with a broom at the mast-head, like our Admiral Tromp, sailing the ocean, as a sign that you have cleared the elements of life of arbitrary prejudices."

Spinoza entered into the jesting humor of his friend, only so far pursuing his object as to explain that even this stroke through the calculation must be an effect of the same cause; that the passions must not be regarded as exceptional, but recognized as natural laws. Meyer tried in all ways to analyze Spinoza's intellectual method, and bent on this study he came again to talk with him.

"I have been thinking," he said to him one day, "of what you once said to me about the study of the Talmud, and think I understand how it is that you Jews can clamber up and down such intellectual ladders; if you jump over two or three rounds you do not miss your footing. It all comes by studying the Talmud, which accustoms you so early to free intellectual gymnastics. We, however—I can only use myself for an example—we were very differently trained. If one of us bring a thought into the world the midwives of the catechism come, and in accordance with immemorial