Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/238

226 attaching yourself to piety, you lead at the same time a peaceful and tranquil life."

His temperance and good management were admirable. His daily wants were provided for by a handicraft in which he became very skillful—the polishing of lenses. The Van der Spycks made over to Colerus scraps of paper on which Spinoza had noted down his expenses; these averaged about fourpence halfpenny a day. He was very careful to settle his accounts every quarter, so as neither to spend more nor less than his income. He dressed simply if not poorly, but his aspect radiated serenity. It was evident that he had found out a doctrine which gave him perfect content.

He was never elated, and never depressed; the equability of his moods seems wonderful. Perhaps, indeed, he may have felt some sadness when the daughter of his professor, Van den Ende, preferred Kerkering to him; but I suspect that he soon consoled himself. "Reason is my enjoyment," he would say, "and the aim I have in this life is joy and serenity." He objected to any praise of sadness.

Since the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, no life had been witnessed so profoundly penetrated by the sentiment of the Divine. In the twelfth, thirteenth, sixteenth century, rationalistic philosophy had numbered very great men in its ranks, but it had had no saints. Occasionally a very repulsive and hard element had entered into the finest characters among Italian freethinkers. Religion had been utterly absent from those lives not less in revolt against human than divine laws, of which the last example was that of poor Vanini. Here, on the contrary, we have religion producing free thought as a part of