Chapter XXXIV: Spinoza

=1. Clouds obscure the Dawn.=――The dawn which had arisen on the Jews in Holland had now fairly spread to England. But so long and so stormy had been the night, that the dawn was dark and tempestuous, and the light of perfect day was still very far off. Dense clouds swept ever and anon across the Jewish horizon, and one such heavy mist hung over the community in Amsterdam even as Manasseh was so manfully striving to disperse the fogs in London. And these mists and clouds and fogs, which rose up obscuring the dawn, were due sometimes as much to Jewish as to Christian atmospheric conditions. It is a strange fact to record, that at the very time when Manasseh was earnestly pleading to the English nation for religious liberty and freedom of conscience to be granted to the Jews, the elders of his own congregation in Amsterdam seemed to be as seriously engaged in denying these rights to one of their body, a young man of four-and-twenty, who, now known to the world as Benedict Spinoza, is accounted ‘great among the greatest as a thinker.’[52]

=2. The Amsterdam Jews at the Time of Spinoza.=――In November 1632, when the Amsterdam synagogue had been built just four-and-thirty years, there was born to one of the Spanish Jewish families there resident, called d’Espinoza, a son who received the name of Baruch. To understand at all his sad and wonderful story, it is necessary, first of all, to see in what ways their residence in Holland had affected the refugees from Spain and Portugal. Though, at the date of Spinoza’s birth, nearly forty years had passed since Jews from the Peninsula had settled in Holland, the community in Amsterdam were far from being good Dutch Jews, in any complete sense of either word. They were good according to their lights, but their lights had come to burn low and false, through the long, fierce glare of the Inquisition. They were Dutch in any practical ordinary interpretation of grateful loyalty, but in language, in manners, and in modes of thought, they were still Spanish. And as Jews, these emancipated Marannos fell also distinctly short of the standard. Their very earnestness was in some sort against them. They were not content to be ‘witnesses,’ they would be judges. Their consciousness of their own long neglect of all the forms of Judaism was so keen, that they sought relief from this self-reproach in hunting out cause for reproach in others, and they were, in truth, terror-stricken when any member of the community questioned any doctrine or abandoned any practice of Judaism. They did not seem to realise that to be Jewish in every minute observance, is not quite the same thing as to fulfil the Jewish Law in the sense in which the prophet Micah exhorted us――to ‘do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.’

And in their studies, also, a defect from this same feverish fervour of long-repressed religion became manifest. They were so delighted to be able again to openly read their Law and their Talmud, that even in these sober pursuits they grew immoderate. Law and Talmud were not enough for them in their restless mood of repentant energy. Many scholars began eagerly to adopt and to accept the wildest and most fanciful ‘extensions’ in religion and in philosophy. There is a whole branch of Jewish doctrinal study which is called the Kabbala. Grätz describes the Kabbala as a fungous growth which, since the thirteenth century, crept over the body of the Law and of tradition. This Kabbala is a weed of Eastern planting, but amongst Western scholars, in waste places, it got some space to grow. It is a strange combination of faith and philosophy, and its mystical character facilitated the introduction of all sorts of un-Jewish beliefs and superstitions under the name of Kabbala. Thus we have a quantity of so-called Kabbalistic literature, containing a superstitious agglomeration of signs and wonders, which would lead its students to credulous musings on evil spirits, and false prophets, and spurious Messiahs, instead of to earnest belief in the one true God and His servant Moses. It was only minds which had become weakened and debased by Kabbalistic studies that could have believed in such a Messiah as Sabbatai Zevi. That episode in 1666――some ten years later than the date of Spinoza’s banishment and excommunication from the Amsterdam synagogue――is an extreme instance of the tendency of the zeal of superstition. The incident of Uriel da Costa, which had its place in Amsterdam some sixteen years earlier, when Spinoza was a boy of eight, is an instance of the lengths to which even good and cultivated men may be carried by the zeal of intolerance.

=3. Spinoza’s Student Days.=――It was in a community shaped by such influences and such experiences, among passionately observant and rigorously conforming Jews, that Baruch Spinoza was brought up. And to make the misunderstanding which came about between him and his congregation more utterly hopeless, Spinoza was a born genius, an original, creative thinker, whilst his masters, and teachers, and elders were only cultivated, and clever, and commonplace. A wide gulf separates knowledge, however great, from genius. The Amsterdam congregation had acquired the one, and Spinoza possessed the other, and this exceptional gift of his was not known, nor guessed at till it was too late.

Little is known of the social position of Baruch Spinoza’s parents, nor can much be inferred from the fact that he received an excellent education, since in all classes, and at all periods, Jews have made an effort to secure for their children the best that was obtainable in the way of knowledge. The course of instruction in Jewish schools was almost entirely confined to the Hebrew language and literature, but this course, as in the ancient _Kallahs_,[53] was made to include a very wide range of subjects. In the more advanced classes analysis and mathematics were taught, and Maimonides and Ibn Ezra were the text-books for philosophy and theology. The students, too, were kept well abreast of the physical and natural science of the age. Manasseh ben Israel was one of Spinoza’s teachers, and the Rabbi Saul Morteira was another. Latin and German he seems to have studied outside of the community, under a physician named Van den Ende. The French and Italian languages also he mastered, and he gained something more than a rudimentary knowledge of Greek. Spanish was more or less to him, as to all of the Maranno-descended Jews, a native tongue. He was clever, too, at drawing, but this long list of his acquirements gives no accurate idea of his powers, for much scholarship is not in itself a guarantee of ability. A mind may be filled full as a storehouse with facts, and yet be empty of ideas, and feeble in intellectual grasp. Spinoza not only learnt, but he thought. He not only acquired information, but be propounded theories. The community was a little distrustful of originality, and rather liked knowledge to run into ready-made moulds. This young man, too, was unobservant of forms, and imprudently free-spoken in his opinions. Though not above making use, as his subsequent philosophical writings show, of ideas and principles and arguments contained in Jewish works, he yet felt some contempt for the tendency of current Jewish scholarship, and would express himself very openly concerning Bible and Talmud and everything that was dear and holy to Jews. On many grounds the Amsterdam Jews were afraid of nonconforming members. They dreaded a relapse into nominal Judaism. They felt it a duty to keep dangerous elements at arm’s length, from a not unworthy fear that another Judaism might be set up before this hardly regained Judaism of theirs was firmly established in hearts and homes. And besides, not only for the sake of the synagogue had they to be careful to guard themselves from disunion, but the new and uncertain toleration which Jews enjoyed among Christians might easily be imperilled by unseemly religious differences in the congregation. So much or so little must justly be said in explanation of the attitude of the Amsterdam community towards Spinoza. Not as much can be urged in defence of their subsequent action.

=4. Things come to a Climax.=――Even in his student days, and by his fellow-students, Spinoza had begun to be looked upon as dangerous, and by the time he was twenty-three, matters came to their regrettable climax. His speculative and independent opinions grew to be a subject for serious discussion among the elders of the synagogue, and, of course, to them he was only a young man, whose genius, even if guessed at, was as yet quite unproved. They were acting, it must be borne in mind, only on their knowledge of him, not on ours, and, from their point of view, for the good of the community. They would have brought back their wandering sheep to the fold, if it could be done; but if not, it was thought well to drive such a one definitely outside of it altogether, and so be rid of the responsibility of him. The Spanish-descended Jews, it must be confessed, were always consistent in their policy of prudent aloofness from any embarrassing contact with brethren either of unsafe morals or of unpleasant manners. In this case they did not want to argue with the young man, nor yet to punish him, if it could be avoided; they wished, with simple selfishness, to be free of a member who was likely to bring them into trouble. An offer was made to Spinoza of an annuity of a thousand florins, if he would, so far as utterance and observance were concerned, conform to the rules and rites of the synagogue. The offer showed singularly little knowledge of Spinoza’s character. It was, without a moment’s hesitation, promptly and peremptorily declined. The elders grew angrier. He was summoned before them, censured, and put ‘without the camp’ for thirty days, and a little later, his firm and calm attitude incensing them yet more, and it also being reported that young men were being misled by him, these comparatively mild measures were followed up by a distinct sentence of excommunication. The text of the excommunication is painful to read. In solemn terms he was cursed with ‘all the curses that are written in the Law,’ both in the mass, and in pretty separate detail, and any and every form of communication with members of his own faith was categorically denied to him. It was a terrible document, and the only shadow of excuse that can be made for it lies in the fact that it was a strong-spoken age, an age that hated heresy, and was much given to the burning of heretics. Curse and anathema were in the air. Readers of history will remember the terms in which Martin Luther spoke and wrote of Erasmus, and how, in dealing with his religious adversaries generally, the brave monk ‘hurled words like rocks and boulders on their heads.’ Martin Luther’s work was more than a century old at the time of Spinoza’s excommunication, but it is curious to trace how the fierce struggles of the Reformation, like the deadly tactics of the Inquisition, made their mark and left their influence on Jewish action.

=5. How Spinoza took his Sentence: his Mode of Life.=――

‘Vulgar minds
Refuse or crouch beneath their load; the brave
Bear theirs without repining,’

says an English poet.[54] Spinoza was a very different sort of man from Uriel da Costa. He neither raged, nor protested, nor recanted. He accepted the sentence passed upon him, recognising the cruel injustice of it, but recognising also the force of circumstances, and what had been his own share in bringing it about. He removed to a little distance from Amsterdam, and altering his name to its Latin equivalent, Benedict Spinoza, he faced his life under its new conditions. His first necessity was to secure the means of living; and here the Jewish instinct we have so often noted asserted itself at once, and the hands made ready to help the head. He worked as an optician, and it is characteristic of this great man that the lenses and glasses which he cut were as much appreciated by opticians as are his books by scholars. And he wrote and he taught, and in the latter occupation found some compensations from the utter loneliness to which he had been condemned. His pupils conceived an immense affection for him, and one named De Vries, who knew himself doomed to an early death, earnestly desired to make Spinoza his heir. But the young man had a brother living, and Spinoza would not permit his pupil to put aside the righteous claim of his own kindred. When De Vries died, the brother who came into his fortune would have settled an annual income on Spinoza, but even this he refused, taking only at last, after much persuasion, the half of what was pressed upon him. A man’s conduct in money matters is a very tolerable test of the stuff he is made of, and in another instance, where a legacy was in question, Spinoza acted in precisely the same serenely just and unimpulsive fashion. When his father died, there was a small inheritance left for the family, which, besides this banished son, consisted of two daughters. On the ground of his having been expelled from the community of Israel, the sisters disputed Spinoza’s right to his share of the property. Spinoza did not yield to this injustice; he considered it a duty of every citizen to resist any form of wrong-doing, whether his own advantage was concerned in the event or no. He knew he had not forfeited his right to his fair share in the division of their father’s property, and he would not waive his right. But when his claim was established and allowed, he declined to profit by it. Justice was satisfied, generosity might be indulged. He gave up to his sisters every bit of his portion, save only one bed! He cared very little about money, and even, which is rarer, very little for most of the pleasures which money ensures. His mode of living was most frugal. In his effort to make both ends meet, he once jestingly compared himself to a snake, which has to wriggle to get its tail in its mouth. Still he was not, in the very least, miserly or misanthropical. He enjoyed social intercourse with people of the ordinary as well as of the clever sort, and indulged his liking by means of correspondence when he could not get talk. In the later years of his life he took up his abode in the Hague, with a family by the name of Van der Spyck, kind, good, uncultivated people, who grew to have the sincerest affection and esteem for their gentle, scholarly lodger. Perhaps it was in return for the interest and pleasure which Spinoza took in the kind woman’s children, that she one day anxiously asked him――for of course they all knew that he was not of the same religion as his hosts――whether his form of belief or theirs was the better. ‘All religions are good,’ he answered, ‘that lead one to a good life; you need not seek further.’ The truth of this axiom was demonstrated in his own life.

Spinoza never renounced his religion, but it shines out more perhaps in his life than in his philosophy. Spinoza showed himself a Jew, in despite, as it were, of himself. He was a faithful, patriotic citizen, trustworthy always, and trusted greatly in a time of panic and danger, which the Netherlands experienced in 1672, when the King of France (Louis XIV.) ‘came down to Utrecht like a land flood.’ He never had much longing for fame, and it was characteristic that when, after the publication of his _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg was offered to him, he declined it, fearing that in that responsible position he might feel fettered, and be unable to speak out all the truth that was in him, and thus be less really useful to his fellow-men.

=6. Unto this Last.=――He went on, year after year, with the work that lay close to his hand, using his loneliness and his trials not as weapons, but as tools. He continued day by day to write, and to teach, and to make his spectacles, doing each different duty with all his might, and each in as perfect fashion as was possible to him. He was of a cheerful spirit, though never of robust health. And, with no wife or child to whom his health was of supreme importance, he died, almost unexpectedly, of consumption, when he was only forty-five years old (Feb. 27, 1677).

=7. His Writings.=――Of these, the most celebrated are the treatise, partly political and partly theological, called _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, which was published in 1670, and the ‘Ethics,’ his great philosophical work, which was not published till after his death. As it would be impossible to convey, to one who had never read his plays, any intellectual idea of Shakespeare by merely saying that he wrote ‘Hamlet,’ so is it hopeless to get at any notion of Spinoza as an author by a bald statement of his works. Spinoza’s writings are strong meat, and need a trained digestion. ‘His mind,’ says Auerbach, ‘has fed the thought of two centuries;’ and this picturesque statement must serve as the only indication that can be here given of the fare so provided.

=8. Results.=――To the world, the value of Spinoza is as a thinker; to his people, a small section of whom in mistaken zeal cast him off, his chief worth seems to lie in his mode of life. Among the more temperate charges which have been brought against Jews, it has been often urged that, whilst the race has produced good learners and clever adapters, among the world’s teachers there have been no Jews in the foremost rank. Jews need not be greatly concerned to deny whatever there may be of truth in this impeachment. Their mission is not to be pioneers in any particular path, but to be witnesses in the way of life. And it is in so far as they fail in this, that as Jews they fail altogether. Therefore that Spinoza, in the character of his genius, was an exceptional Jew may be granted with all equanimity. Genius is always exceptional in its nature, and of no especial nationality. But putting his genius altogether on one side, we claim that in his steadfast, lovable nature, in his temperate, frugal, hard-working life, and in his sober, but humorous acceptance of the circumstances of his lot, Spinoza was a typical Jew, and, moreover, a Jew of no uncommon type. Not an easy-going, nor even a willing ‘witness’ often to the beauties of Judaism was Spinoza, but always, and for all time, a powerful one, and perhaps the more powerful because, to some extent, unconscious. Most of the incidents of his biography have come down to us through a Lutheran clergyman named Colerus, to whom all Spinoza’s philosophical theories were detestable. Thus there can be no suspicion of undue praise about these records of ‘M. Spinoza of blessed memory,’ as he was called by a poor tradesman who knew the man, but had never read a line of the author.