2 26 THE POPULAR SCIJENCE MONTHLY. 



attaching yourself to piety, you lead at the same time a peaceful and 

 tranquil life." 



His temperance and good management were admirable. His daily 

 wants were provided for by a handicraft in which he became very 

 skillful the polishing of lenses. The Van der Spycks made over to 

 Colerus scraps of paper on which Spinoza had noted down his ex- 

 penses ; these averaged about fourpence halfpenny a day. He was 

 very careful to settle his accounts every quarter, so as neither to spend 

 more nor less than his income. He dressed simply if not poorly, but 

 his aspect radiated serenity. It was evident that he had found out a 

 doctrine which gave him perfect content. 



He was never elated, and never depressed ; the equability of his 

 moods seems wonderful. Perhaps, indeed, he may have felt some sad- 

 ness when the daughter of his professor, Van den Ende, preferred 

 Kerkering to him; but I suspect that he soon consoled himself. 

 "Reason is my enjoyment," he would say, "and the aim I have in 

 this life is joy and serenity." He objected to any praise of sadness. 



" It is superstition," he maintained, " that sets up sadness as good, and all that 

 tends to joy as evil. God would show himself envious if he took pleasure in my 

 impotence and in the ills I suffer. Eather in proportion to the greatness of our 

 joy do we attain to a greater perfection and participate more fully in the divine 

 nature. . . . Joy, therefore, can never be evil so long as it be regulated by the 

 law of our true utility. A virtuous life is not a sad and sombre one, a life of 

 privations and austerity. How should the Divinity take pleasure in the spectacle 

 of my weakness, or impute to me, as meritorious, tears, sobs, terrors signs all 

 of an impotent soul? Yes," he added, emphatically, "it is the part of a wise 

 man to use the things of this life, and enjoy them as much as possible ; to recruit 

 himself by a temperate and appetizing diet ; to charm his senses with the per- 

 fume and the brilliant verdure of plants ; to adorn his very attire ; to enjoy music, 

 games, spectacles, and every diversion that any one can bestow on himself with- 

 out detriment to character. . . . "We are incessantly spoken to of repentance, 

 humility, death ; but repentance is not a virtue, but the consequence of a weak- 

 ness. Nor is humility one, since it springs in man from the idea of his inferiority. 

 As to the thought of death, it is the daughter of fear, and it is in feeble souls 

 that it sets up its home. . . . The things of all others," he would say, " about 

 which a free man thinks least is deatli. Wisdom lies in the contemplation not 

 of death, but of life." 



V. 

 Since the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, no life had been 

 witnessed so profoundly penetrated by the sentiment of the Divine. 

 In the twelfth, tliirteenth, sixteenth century, rationalistic philosophy 

 had numbered very great men in its ranks, but it had had no saints. 

 Occasionally a very repulsive and hard element had entered into the 

 finest characters among Italian freethinkers. Religion had been 

 utterly absent from those lives not less in revolt against human than 

 divine laws, of which the last example Avas that of poor Vanini. Here, 

 on the contrary, we have religion producing free thought as a part of 



