Note 15 — Chapter III

It is not within the scope of the present essay to give a life of Barach (or Benedict) de Spinoza. But for the sake of those to whom the work of Sir Frederick Pollock is not easily accessible, the following particulars may be given. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, November, 1632, of a fairly prosperous Jewish family, originally from Portugal. He received thorough instruction in the language and literature of the Hebrews, and in addition became a good Latin scholar, so far as to write and correspond in that language. He was early interested in philosophy, and especially attracted for a time by the writings of Descartes. By the time he was twenty-three years old he was suspected of heresy, and in his twenty-fourth year (1655) was cut off from the Synagogue with a frightful curse. His family disowned him, and for his maintenance he turned to the polishing of lenses, a trade already learned in accordance with the Jewish custom that every boy must have a handicraft. What he earned would hardly be considered a "living wage" in these days. But according to Colerus, his first biographer, who enquired of the householders with whom Spinoza lodged, his day's maintenance of often cost no more than 4-1/2d. Various incidents proved his total indifference to money, except as far as needed to "provide things honest in the sight of all men." Though of an amiable and sociable disposition he lived a solitary life, while not indisposed to kindly talk with his humbler neighbours. He had some of the greatest scholars of the day among his correspondents. He published but little during his life, leaving his greatest work as a legacy to the world on his early death, at the Hague, from consumption, in 1677.