Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/44

xxxviii an occasion, and he would thus remain attached to the Synagogue during his year of mourning. In the months of September, October, and November fell the anniversaries of the deaths of his sister Miriam, his stepmother, and his mother respectively. He would be expected to attend Synagogue on these occasions, and hardly be disinclined. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find him again in the Synagogue on the 5th of December. In all probability that was not the last occasion either on which he was seen in Synagogue—the anniversary of his father's death, in March 1656, most likely saw him there again. What exactly happened in the interval between March and July 1656 is not certain, though it may not be difficult to conjecture. Possibly some of his young Jewish friends spoke to him on the subject of death—a subject natural enough under the circumstances—and may have been surprised and shocked to hear from him that in his view the Bible did not teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and that, in the Bible, &quot;soul&quot; was simply synonymous with &quot;life.&quot; This might have led up to the more general question of the existence of disembodied spirits or angels, which Spinoza then described as unreal, and mere phantoms of the imagination. But what about God? would be the natural rejoinder. God, said Spinoza, was also not incorporeal, but extended. At all events, it was these heretical views which were soon afterwards made the ground of his excommunication; but they were not really the whole ground—there were other reasons.

Reference has already been made to the fact that, on the death of their father, Rebekah endeavoured to keep her half-brother from his share in the inheritance. Her idea no doubt was that Spinoza might earn his livelihood, whereas she had nothing wherewith to support herself, and ought therefore to be provided for. Possibly her brother-in-law, de Casseres, a prospective Rabbi, learned in the