21 February: Boreham on Baruch Spinoza

The Lamps of Liberty
Today is the anniversary of the death of a particularly striking and picturesque figure, Baruch Spinoza. In the days immediately preceding the Great Plague and the Great Fire, two men pored over manuscripts that were destined to mould the ages. John Milton was busy with his "Paradise Lost"; Spinoza, a man of 30, whose eyes glistened with the tell-tale lustre that betokens the ravages of consumption, was putting the finishing touches to his "Ethics."

He was born on November 24, 1632 at Amsterdam. The boyhood of Spinoza was spent in a Jewish home of the best type. The sacred traditions of the Synagogue were in his blood. His grandfather and his father had been revered and honoured leaders in Israel. The fact that he was named Baruch, the Blessed, whilst his sisters were Rebekah and Miriam, indicates the atmosphere in which the philosopher was reared.

Epic Of Intellectual Independence
The most momentous event of his youth was his determination to learn Latin. Three essential developments attended this step. The first was that he selected as his tutor a doctor named Van Den Ende, an extraordinary character, who was hanged in Paris in 1674. The second was that he fell in love with his teacher's pretty daughter, who, a little later, jilted him. And the third was that his new acquirement brought him into touch with modern philosophy and opened up a new world. As a result of this adventure he felt himself to be moving on another plane and speaking another language. His old associates suspected his orthodoxy, and, in point of fact, he himself was not very sure of it. He was offered a thousand florins a year to reaffirm his attachment to his old faith. He indignantly refused, and, in 1656 was solemnly excommunicated from the Commonwealth of Israel.

His behaviour at this crisis was characteristic of him. His mind was on pilgrimage and must be free to follow its own bent. Later on, although poorer than any church mouse, he declined a pension from the French king, and an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, lest acceptance of such tempting boons should commit him to teach a little more or a little less than, at the moment, he really believed. Than Spinoza, the world has never known a more honest man.

Robbed Of Fame By Early Death
In the course of his brief career, his disciples, pitying his physical frailty, made him handsome gifts, but, for the most part, he supported himself by labouring with his own hands. Like all young Jews of the period, he had learned a trade. He was a skilful polisher of lenses; and the spectacles, microscopes, and telescopes that proceeded from his bench were held in the highest repute. Unfortunately, however, the dust resulting from the constant grinding and filing of glasses irritated his crazy lungs, aggravating his malady, and hastening his death.

One of his greatest admirers was Henry Oldenburg, the first secretary of the Royal Society. Oldenburg more than once visited the little cottage in which Spinoza boarded, and through the years maintained with him a voluminous correspondence. As time went on, however, Oldenburg began to find himself out of his depth. He twitted his old friend with having forsaken philosophy for theology; he was spending too much of his time with angels and archangels.

The simple fact was that, the more Spinoza probed the mysteries of matter and mind, the more certain he became of that spiritual realm in which these things live and move and have their being. Like Milton, his illustrious contemporary, he felt that earth is but the shadow of heaven. He talked more and more about God as the source of all things, the home of all things, and the destiny of all things. He came to love God and was eager that all men should know and love Him, too. In a phrase that has stuck to his name, Novalis called him the God-intoxicated man.

Milton made his way through the charred ruins of the metropolis to sell his ponderous manuscript for five pounds to a very nervous publisher. Spinoza was robbed of even that meagre satisfaction. His consumption slew him at 44. He left just enough goods and chattels to pay his debts and funeral expenses. His greatest work, published long after his death, was hailed by the most eminent critics as a masterpiece; and, although now superseded or incorporated in the works of later writers, it exercised a profound influence on the thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

F W Boreham

Picture: Spinoza