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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



BENEDICT DE SPINOZA. 



By FBEDEEICK POLLOCK. 



IT is now two hundred years since there died, in 

 an obscure lodging at the Hague, Benedict de 

 Spinoza, a philosopher appreciated in his own 

 time only by a very few. His name was indeed 

 widely known, but it was for the most part known 

 only to be execrated. For some time after his 

 death Spinozist was current among the theo- 

 logians of Holland as a term of opprobium. 

 Spinoza's thought, however, was of that vital kind 

 which sooner or later cannot fail to make for it- 

 self a way into its due place. Some three-quar- 

 ters of a century after his death came the great 

 awakening of letters and philosophy in Germany, 

 and the leaders of that movement, among whom 

 the name of Lessing must be mentioned first, 

 were not slow to perceive Spinoza's importance. 

 Ever since that time his influence has been a 

 widening and increasing one : not that I stop to 

 maintain this in the strictest sense which can be 

 put upon the words, for I do not think a philoso- 

 pher's influence is properly measured by the 

 number of persons who agree with his doctrines. 

 Philosophical doctrines have been, and will doubt- 

 less continue to be, matter of controversy, but it 

 is no matter of controversy that the life of a 

 righteous man who gives up all else that he may 

 seek the truth for its own sake is a sure and 

 priceless possession for all the generations ■ of 

 men who come after him. 



Baruch de Spinoza was born at Amsterdam 

 on the 24th of November, 1632. His parents 

 were members of the Portuguese synagogue, a 

 community established toward the end of the 

 sixteenth century by Jewish exiles from Spain 

 and Portugal, who had turned to the United 

 Provinces as a safe asylum. For at this critical 

 time Holland, it should be remembered to her 

 eternal honor, was the most tolerant common- 

 wealth in Europe. Spinoza was brought up in 

 the course of Hebrew learning then usual, and at 

 the age of fifteen was already distinguished for 

 his knowledge of the Talmud. He was also 

 familiar from his youth up, as his writings bear 

 witness, with the masterpieces of the golden age 

 of modern Jewish literature. From the tenth 



1 In the coarse of this paper I shall have to refer 

 several times to Dr. A. van der Linde's " Benedictus 

 Spinoza : Bibliografie " (the Hague, 1871), which gives 

 a full account of the literature of the subject. 



to the twelfth centuries there flourished at the 

 Mohammedan courts of Spain and Africa a se- 

 ries of Arab and Hebrew philosophers who held 

 a position with regard to the societies in which 

 they lived much like that of the Catholic school- 

 men afterward with regard to Western Christen- 

 dom. Like the schoolmen, they set themselves 

 to effect a fusion of the Aristotelian philosophy 

 with the accepted theology of their churches ; and 

 the schoolmen were in fact acquainted with their 

 work to a considerable extent, and referred to it 

 quite openly, and in general with respect. 1 



The Jewish schoolmen, if we may so call them, 

 cannot be said to have founded any distinct phil- 

 osophical doctrine; in philosophy they were 

 hardly distinguishable, if at all, from their Mo- 

 hammedan compeers. But they gave a distinct 

 philosophical cast to Jewish theology, and there- 

 by to Jewish education. Two names stand out 

 foremost among them. Ibn-Ezra (1088-1166 a. d.) 

 was a traveler, astronomer, grammarian, and 

 poet, in addition to the learning in theology and 

 philosophy which made his commentaries on the 

 Scriptures classical. But the chief of all is Moses 

 ben Maimon (1135-1205 a. c), who became known 

 in Europe as Maimonides, the father of modern 

 Jewish theology. He was regarded with such 

 veneration as to be compared to the great Law- 

 giver himself, so that it passed into a proverb, 

 "From Moses until Moses there arose none like 

 unto Moses." 2 The Jewish peripatetic school was 

 also represented in Provence, where, in the four- 

 teenth century, Levi ben Gerson, the most daring 

 of all the Jewish philosophers, and Moses of Nar- 



1 The names of Ibn-Roshd (Averroes) and Ibn-Sina 

 (Avicenna) were familiar in Europe, and Dante groups 

 them ("Inferno," iv, 143) with the leaders of classical 

 science and philosophy. Dm-Gebirol (Avicebron), a 

 Jewish member of the school, broke with the Aristo- 

 telian tradition to take up Neo-Platonic ideas. His 

 philosophical work was discredited and fell into ob- 

 livion among his own people ; bnt it became current 

 in Europe in a Latin form, and was used by Giordano 

 Bruno, through whom it may have thus come round to 

 Spinoza. 



2 In later times the proverb received an extended 

 application in honor of Moses Mendelssohn, the grand- 

 father of the musician, himself a philosopher and the 

 restorer of Jewish culture in Germany. Maimonides's 

 reputation was not established without conflict. About 

 1235 his opinions were formally condemned by the 

 synagogue of Montpellier. 



