a Jewish family of
Portugal or Spain, which had fled to Holland to escape persecution at home.
He was born in Amsterdam in 1632; taught by the Rabbin Morteira, and,
in Latin, by Van den Ende, a free-thinking physician who had enjoyed a
philological training; and expelled by anathema from the Jewish communion,
1656, on account of heretical views. During the next four years he found
refuge at a friend's house in the country near Amsterdam, after which he
lived in Rhynsburg, and from 1664 in Voorburg, moving thence, in 1669, to
The Hague, where he died in 1677. Spinoza lived in retirement and had few
wants; he supported himself by grinding optical glasses; and, in 1673,
declined the professorship at Heidelberg offered him by Karl Ludwig, the
Elector Palatine, because of his love of quiet, and on account of the
uncertainty of the freedom of thought which the Elector had assured him.
Spinoza himself made but two treatises public: his dictations on the first
and second parts of Descartes's _Principia Philosophiae_, which had been
composed for a private pupil, with an appendix, _Cogitata Metaphysica_,
1663, and the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, published anonymously
in 1670, in defense of liberty of thought and the right to unprejudiced
criticism of the biblical writings. The principles expressed in the latter
work were condemned by all parties as sacrilegious and atheistic, and
awakened concern even in the minds of his friends. When, in 1675, Spinoza
journeyed to Amsterdam with the intention of giving his chief work, the
_Ethics_, to the press, the clergy and the followers of Descartes applied
to the government to forbid its issue. Soon after Spinoza's death it was
published in the _Opera Posthuma_, 1677, which were issued under the care
of Hermann Schuller,[1] with a preface by Spinoza's friend, the physician
Ludwig Meyer, and which contained, besides the chief work, three incomplete
treatises (_Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione,
Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae_) and a collection of Letters by
and to Spinoza. The _Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata_, in five parts,
treats (1) of God, (2) of the nature and origin of the mind, (3) of the
nature and origin of the emotions, (4) of human bondage or the strength
of the passions, (5) of the power of the reason or human freedom. It has
become known within recent times that Spinoza made a very early sketch
of the system developed in the _Ethics_, th