Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/140

134 be made replies such as that, according to the Bible (by which is meant, of course, only the Old Testament), God is evidently material, the idea of spirit being perfectly unknown to that book; that by angels were there meant certain phantoms, phenomena of a merely subjective order, not real and permanent substances (a heresy, by-the-bye, of which it is difficult to perceive the offensiveness); and that —


 * As for the soul, wherever it is mentioned in the Scriptures, this word expresses simply life, or that which hath life. So that to seek for proofs of immortality in the Scriptures were absurd.

A heresy which hears a most amusing resemblance to a remark for which Gibbon got into hot water; an element, however, which was but most mildly lukewarm in comparison with the seething floods of fanaticism that were to roll over the soul of Spinoza. The reader will observe that none of these are philosophical assertions but that they are, all of them, merely propositions belonging to the perfectly positive science of Biblical criticism. A tittle of evidence may perhaps be considered to be contained in the quaint statement of Stolle's old man (of whom more hereafter) that Spinoza was excommunicated because he "was charged with having rejected the books of Moses as a human book, not written by Moses (weil man ihn beschuldigt, dass er die Bücher Mosis, als ein menschlich Buch, so Moses nie gemacht, verworfen)." "Reflecting," continues Lucas, "that curiosity seldom springs from good intentions, he set himself to observe the conduct of these friends; and found in it so much to disapprove of that he broke with them, and would no longer speak with them."

The "friends" vowed vengeance, — so the story runs, — which they instituted by crying him down in the opinion of the people, giving warning that instead of becoming one of the pillars of the synagogue this young man was more likely to become a destroyer of it; and proceeded afterwards to lodge a formal accusation against him with the rabbins. The accused was summoned to appear before the rabbins. He obeyed, and betook himself to the synagogue. There the Jewish doctors, "with the downcast visages of men tormented by their zeal for the house of God," told him that he was "accused of the blackest and most enormous of crimes, contempt of the law." And on his denying this (to this day the whole of Spinoza's writings are an eloquent witness that with his sweet reasonableness of soul he must have been ever incapable of any outrage against religion or the State) the false friends stepped forward with their deposition. The judges urged the accused to recant; but to their entreaties and to their menaces he now opposed a haughty defiance. Morteira then arrived upon the scene, armed with friendly exhortation as well as with official menace. The threat of excommunication to which he at length proceeded did not mend matters; and the assembly broke tip without any definite result having been obtained. The strangeness and the bitterness of this story of betrayal as related by Lucas do not tempt belief; yet it should be remembered that the anathema by which Spinoza was excommunicated refers to "witnesses," and that fanaticism is capable of malignity and of treachery to an extent the quantification of which may be left to the reader.

As to what followed we are on a firmer ground of history. The "secession" from the synagogue of a young man who was already widely known as a favorite disciple of Morteira and as a Talmudist of extraordinary attainments, was not a thing to be lightly incurred. Further efforts were made to extract concessions from him; he remained deaf to exhortation. The price attached to his friendship by the rabbins showed itself in the offer that they made him of an annuity of 1,000 florins, "to induce him to stay among them, and to continue to show himself from time to time in their synagogues." The apostate refused. A less gentle argumentum ad hominem was tried by some person unknown to infamy. One evening, as the philosopher was leaving the old Portuguese synagogue,


 * He saw some one near him, poignard in hand and this having caused him to be on his guard, and to keep to one side, he escaped the thrust, which took effect only upon his clothes. He preserved the justaucorps pierced by the thrust in memory of the event.

Quitting Amsterdam, he retired some little distance into the country, with a friend, of whom all that we know is that he was a member of the religious sect known as Rijnsburgers or Collegiants. During this absence from Amsterdam, Morteira's threat was put into execution,