Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/303

SPI frequent attendance at church, and taught them to be obedient and dutiful to their parents. When the people of the house returned from sermon, he would often ask them what they had learned and laid up for use. Spinoza, adds Colerus, had a great regard for my predecessor, Dr. Cordes, a learned and able man, of an exemplary life, which gave the philosopher an opportunity of eulogizing him. He sometimes went to hear him preach, and particularly valued the learned way in which he explained the Bible, and the solid applications of it which he made. He would exhort his landlord and the people in the house not to miss any sermon of so excellent a preacher. It happened that his landlady asked him one day whether he supposed that she could be saved in the religion which she professed; to which he replied, "Your religion is good; you need not look for another, nor doubt you can be saved in it, provided that while you apply yourself to piety you lead at the same time a loving and peaceable life." When he lived in his lodgings at the Hague he was troublesome to nobody. He spent most of his time quietly in his own room. When he happened to be tired by too constant philosophical meditation he came down stairs to refresh himself, and chatted easily to the people of the house upon any matter of ordinary conversation. He also liked his pipe of tobacco. When he wanted a longer relaxation from his studies he would sometimes look out for spiders, which he put upon fighting together, or he would throw flies into a spider's web, and then contemplate the battle with such pleasure that he used to break into loud laughter! It was in these simple or eccentric relaxations that the curious nature of Spinoza found occasional rest amid the arduous work of speculation to which, apparently with a passionate desire for intellectual renown, he devoted his life, in the peace and independence of his little lodging at the Hague. His friend, Simon de Vries, once offered him a present of two thousand florins that he might live more comfortably, which Spinoza courteously declined, saying that he wanted for nothing, and that more money might divert him from his meditative studies. The same friend, finding himself at the close of his life without wife and children, wanted to make the philosopher his heir; but Spinoza would not hear of it, and objected to his leaving his property to any one but his own brother, who was his natural heir.

The fame of this strange philosophical recluse at the Hague gradually spread far beyond the town in which he lived; and Holland, his native country, partly by means of his published writings, and the rumours of others in preparation. About 1672 he was visited by Leibnitz, then on his way home to Germany from France. At the time of the French campaign in Holland, the Prince de Condé had a strong desire to see and converse with Spinoza. It is not known whether the philosopher actually had an interview with the prince, but it is certain that he went to the French camp, and that on his return the mob at the Hague were in agitation, taking him for a spy. His landlord rushed to him in alarm. "Don't be afraid," said Spinoza, "I can easily justify myself. As soon as the mob make the least noise at your door, I will go straight out to them, though they treat me as they did the poor De Witts. I am a good republican, and have always aimed at the glory and advantage of the state." Spinoza mentioned to Leibnitz that on the day of the assassination of the brothers De Witt, he wanted to go out and put up in the streets, near the spot of the murders, a placard with the words "Ultimi Barbarorum." His landlord was obliged to use force to keep him at home. About 1673 the elector palatine, Charles Lewis, hearing of the wonderful genius of Spinoza, invited him to Heidelberg, to a chair of philosophy, promising him full liberty of discussion, provided he did not use it to the prejudice of the established church. The appointment was civilly declined by him. He professed that the work of public instruction would prove an obstacle to his meditations; but his real objection seems to have been to the vague condition of non-interference with the established religion.

Spinoza died suddenly in the prime of life. He was, says Colerus, of a very weak constitution, having a slender and delicate frame, with a decidedly consumptive tendency. But the people of the house in which he lived had no idea that he was so near his end, even immediately before he died. On Saturday, the 22nd February, 1677, his landlord and landlady went to church, it being the day of preparation for the communion. On their return from church, Spinoza came down stairs and talked to them, chiefly about the sermon. On Sunday morning, before church time, he came down stairs again, and conversed a good deal with the family, who on their return from church learned with much surprise that the great metaphysical theologian had expired during their absence—dying as quietly as he had lived. He was buried a few days after, in the new church upon the Spay, in presence of some of the most distinguished persons at the Hague. In a bill presented for payment after his death, he is styled by Abraham Keveling, his barber-surgeon, "Mr. Spinoza, of blessed memory;" and a similar compliment was paid to him by the person who furnished gloves at his funeral—incidents which illustrate his amiable goodness in his intercourse with the humble society around him. "This man," as Mosheim candidly allows, "observed in his conduct the rules of wisdom and probity much better than many who profess themselves christians; nor did he ever endeavour to pervert the sentiments or corrupt the morals of those with whom he lived, or to inspire in his discourse a contempt of religion and virtue."

What were the results of that life, passed by the most subtile reasoner of his time in Europe in this strict seclusion at the Hague? We have some of them in his writings—logical, metaphysico-theological, and politico-theological. His most important works were held back till after his death. Two appeared in his lifetime. Bayle says that in his youth he wrote in Spanish an apology (unpublished) for his secession from his hereditary communion, which contained several things that afterwards appeared in the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus." We learn from his correspondence with Oldenburg (one of his few adherents during his life), in 1661, when he was under thirty, that he had even then matured his system; and in a letter to De Vries in 1663, the propositions of the "Ethics" are alluded to numerically as we now have them. Spinoza, as might almost be expected from the nature of his teaching, thus ranks among those whose metaphysical systems were the work of the early part of life. Though his system was not a philosophical novelty, he was himself an independent thinker, and not merely a learned student or critic of the thoughts of others. He is more frequent in his allusions to Des Cartes than to any other philosophical name, but he seems also to have been acquainted with Bacon. The first work of Spinoza appeared in 1663, under the title of "Renati Des Cartes Principia Philosophiæ, more geometrico demonstrata, per Benedictum de Spinoza, Amstelodamensem. Accesserunt ejusdem cogitata metaphysica, in quibus difficiliores quæ tam in parte Metaphysices generali quam speciali occurrunt questiones breviter explicantur." This small treatise is a good summary of the Cartesian philosophy. It was said to have been in part dictated to a young man of whose education he had charge. But the reader is warned that the opinions are those of another, and not necessarily Spinoza's own. Of this tractate Colerus remarks, that had its author gone no further, he might have preserved the reputation of a wise and learned philosopher; though, it should be added, if he had thus refrained, the world would, in a great measure, have lost the peculiar intellectual produce which has made his name one of lasting power. Moreover, the germs of his own metaphysical system are due to Cartesianism, although Maimonides and Averroes have both been referred to as his teachers. He is probably indebted to Maimonides for his principles of biblical criticism and interpretation. It was in 1670 that Spinoza published his celebrated "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," which, proscribed on its first appearance, was afterwards circulated clandestinely under false titles. The "Tractatus" is a theory of divine revelation, which contains the seeds of all the more recent religious rationalism regarding the books of scripture, their interpretation, and the nature of miracles, along with much hostility to clerical authority in every form. It was denounced on its appearance, as maintaining that the prophecies originated in the illusive fancy of the seer—that prophets and apostles wrote naturally, according to their own light and knowledge, without any special divine commission—that they accommodated religion to the genius of their day, and that as the scriptures, on their first appearance, were adapted to the popular religion, so every one now is free to expound them according to his own more advanced knowledge, and to make them agree with his own opinions. Spinoza, it was said, makes the Bible a wax nose, which may be turned and shaped at one's will. Allowance must be made, however, for the exaggeration and misrepresentation which are natural to popular criticism of works on such subjects produced by speculative minds. The storm occasioned by this book made him averse to further publication. His five remaining works were printed in 1677, a few months after his death, under the superintendence of his two friends, Louis Meyer and Jarrig Jellis, under the title "B. D. S.