Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/105

Rh and the Hebrew Grammar. All names and other means of identification had been carefully removed from the correspondence; the editors names, as also the name of the publisher and the place of publication were not given; and only the initials of Spinoza (B. D. S.) appeared on the title-page. The editors were Jelles (who appears to have written the Preface), Meyer, and Schuller; and the editorial work seems to have been carried on secretly in one of the rooms of the Orphan Asylum, which had just been established in Amsterdam by some of Spinoza's Collegiant friends. It was at this Orphan Asylum (which is still in existence) that some of the originals of Spinoza's letters were subsequently discovered, with editorial pencil-notes on them.

Two hundred years later a remarkable contrast to this secrecy was witnessed, when the whole learned world joined in celebrating the memory of Spinoza. In 1880 his statue was erected in the Hague, within view of both houses where he had lived his last years. And a new, complete edition of his works was published in 1882, containing a portrait especially engraved from the painting in the library at Wolfenbüttel, where Lessing, poet, philosopher, and champion of the ill-used, had, nearly a century before that, taken the first steps towards the due recognition of Spinoza. The tribute paid to his memory was world-wide; and it was well deserved. For there is considerable truth in Heine's witty saying that "all our modern philosophers, though often perhaps unconsciously, see through the glasses which Baruch Spinoza ground."

In attempting to form an estimate of the character of Spinoza, one should be guided by what is actually known about him from the direct evidence of those who knew him personally. There is a natural temptation to judge his