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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



rivalry with Spinoza and the pearl necklace 

 must be dismissed as inventions. It does not 

 necessarily follow, however, that the tale of Spi- 

 noza's love for Clara van den Ende is wholly 

 without foundation. Van den Ende probably 

 continued to see something of his former pupil 

 until, to his misfortune, he left Holland ; ' and 

 we know that Spinoza was from time to time at 

 Amsterdam. Besides this, nothing forbids us to 

 suppose that even from an earlier date there may 

 have sprung up a half-romantic, half-childish af- 

 fection between Spinoza and Klaartje. Beatrice 

 was only nine years old, and Dante himself only 

 ten, when the " glorious lady of his soul " first 

 showed herself to his eyes, and the word came to 

 him, Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur 

 mihi. So that if any one is minded to cling to 

 this one piece of romance in Spinoza's life, I 

 think he may do so by taking the story with 

 some such qualification as here suggested. 2 I 

 must confess, however, that my own inclination 

 is, on reflection, toward entire unbelief. The 

 story as told by Colerus is not credible, and any 

 credible story we may devise in its stead must be 

 so different from that given by Colerus as to rest 

 in turth on no evidence at all. Besides, the tes- 

 timony of Colerus is here at its weakest ; he does 

 not report this matter, as he does many others, 

 as being within the actual knowledge of himself 

 or his informants, but refers for confirmation to 

 authorities which are all but worthless. 3 



1 Van den Ende migrated to France, where he in- 

 volved himself in a political conspiracy, hoping that it 

 might turn to the profit of his own country, and was 

 hanged at Paris in 1674. 



s Most recent writers, including Auerbach, to 

 whom it must have given a pang to cast away the 

 foundation of his charming novel, treat the whole 

 story as a fable. Dr. van Vloten himself (" Benedic- 

 tus de Spinoza," second edition, 1871, p. 21), and Dr. 

 H.J. Betz, of the Hague ("Levensschets van Baruch 

 de Spinoza," 1876), take a line not unlike what I have 

 given in the text. Dr. Rothschild ("Spinoza: zur 

 Rechtfertigung seiner Philosophie n. Zeit," Leipsic, 

 1877) boldly maintains Colerus's account as historical, 

 and dismisses the objection as to dates with the re- 

 mark, " Es giebt friihreife Naturen." 



3 Kortholt ("Detribus Impostoribus Magma," No. 

 82 in Van der Linde, cf. No. 287), and the article on 

 Spinoza in Bayle's Dictionary. Kortholt's "three 

 impostors" are Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 

 and Spinoza. The book has nothing to do (beyond 

 the studied similarity of title) with the famous, per- 

 haps mythical, "Detribus Impostoribus," which is a 

 standing riddle of bibliography. Of this, however, a 

 spurious French version circulated in manuscript in 

 the eighteenth century, under the name of " L'Esprit " 

 —or, bound up with Lucas's biography, "La Vie et 

 TEsprit— de M. Benoit de Spinoza." {See Van der 

 Linde, Nos. 99-102.) 



So much we know of Spinoza for the first 

 twenty-three years of his life. We may well be- 

 lieve that he had not long attained man's estate 

 before the freedom of his thought and discourse, 

 and perhaps also laxity in ceremonial observ- 

 ances, began to excite attention among the 

 elders of his people; but, whatever suspicions 

 may have been conceived, and whatever informal 

 warnings may have been given, no action was 

 taken till 1656. A community which owed its 

 existence to flight from repeated persecutions 

 might be expected by a hasty observer of human 

 nature to practise toleration itself; but experi- 

 ence is far from warranting such an inference. 

 Witness the example of the settlers of New Eng- 

 land, whose first use of their freedom from the 

 yoke of Episcopacy was to set up a new ecclesi- 

 astical tyranny after their own patterns, of a kind 

 not less oppressive and infinitely more vexatious. 

 There is too much reason to fear that the Jewish 

 exiles from Spain and Portugal had learned some 

 of the evil lessons of the Inquisition. 1 Apart 

 from this, the synagogue of Amsterdam had 

 good reasons of secular policy for being scrupu- 

 lous, even to excess, in its appearance to the 

 outer world. Holland was indeed the land of 

 toleration ; but toleration was not such as we are 

 nowadays accustomed to, and at this very time 

 theological controversy ran high. The battle of 

 Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants was yet 

 fresh in men's minds; and it behooved a society 

 of men foreign in religion, language, and man- 

 ners, which had been at first received with suspi- 

 cion, and which existed only on sufferance, to let 

 nothing pass among them which could lay them 

 open to a charge of promoting new heresies or 

 being indifferent to the general interests of reli- 

 gion. Hence we can understand the extreme 

 anxiety to avoid an open schism, which marked 

 the first proceedings in Spinoza's case. The 

 ciders would have preferred to retain Spinoza 

 in apparent conformity, and offered him as the 

 price of this a pension of a thousand florins. 

 This being declined, it was probably considered 

 that the only safe course remaining, though not 

 a desirable one in itself, was for the congregation 

 to renounce its freethinking member as com- 

 pletely as possible. Meanwhile, some obscure 

 fanatic, thinking himself, no doubt, a messenger 



1 Dr. Gr&tz ("Geschichte der Juden,-' x., 14) says: 

 "They had brought with them from Spain the fatal 

 passion for maintaining the purity of the faith and ex- 

 terminating heresy. The rabbis of Amsterdam in- 

 troduced the new practice of sitting in judgment on 

 religious opinions and beliefs, setting themselves up 

 as a kind of Inquisition." 



