doctrine of the time in which he
lived.

[M] See the Thirteenth Article.

SPINOZA.[N]

_Benedicti de Spinoza Tractatus de Deo et Homine ejusque Felicitate
Lineamenta. Atque Annotationes ad Tractatum Theologico-Politicum._
Edidit et illustravit EDWARDUS BOEHMER. Halae ad Salam. J. F. Lippert.
1852.

This little volume is one evidence among many of the interest which
continues to be felt by the German students in Spinoza. The actual merit
of the book itself is little or nothing; but it shows the industry with
which they are gleaning among the libraries of Holland for any traces of
him which they can recover; and the smallest fragments of his writings
are acquiring that factitious importance which attaches to the most
insignificant relics of acknowledged greatness. Such industry cannot be
otherwise than laudable, but we do not think it at present altogether
wisely directed. Nothing is likely to be brought to light which will
further illustrate Spinoza's philosophy. He himself spent the better
part of his life in clearing his language of ambiguities; and such
earlier sketches of his system as are supposed still to be extant in
MS., and a specimen of which M. Boehmer believes himself to have
discovered, contribute only obscurity to what is in no need of
additional difficulty. Of Spinoza's private history, on the contrary,
rich as it must have been, and abundant traces of it as must be extant
somewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, we know only
enough to feel how vast a chasm remains to be filled. It is not often
that any man in this world lives a life so well worth writing as Spinoza
lived; not for striking incidents or large events connected with it, but
because (and no sympathy with his peculiar opinions disposes us to
exaggerate his merit) he was one of the very best men whom these modern
times have seen. Excommunicated, disinherited, and thrown upon the world
when a mere boy to seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducements
which on all sides were urged upon him to come forward in the world. He
refused pensions, legacies, money in many forms; he maintained himself
with grinding glasses for optical instruments, an art which he had been
taught in early life, and in which he excelled the best workmen in
Holland; and when he died, which was at the early age of forty-four, the
affection with which he was regarded showed itself singularly in the
endorsement of a tradesman's bill which was sent in