think intently and intensely all of the time. Those who try it never are
able to dive deep nor soar high.... Good digestion demands a certain
amount of coarse food--refined and condensed aliment alone kills. Man
should work and busy himself with the commonplace, rest himself for his
flight, and when the moment of transfiguration comes, make the best of
it.

All he asked was to be given the privilege to work and to think. As for
expressing his thoughts, he made no public addresses and during his life
only one of his books was printed. This was the "Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus," which mentioned "Hamburg" on the title page, but
with the author's name wisely omitted. Trite enough now are the
propositions laid down--that God is everywhere and that man is brother
to the tree, the rock, the flower. Emerson states the case in his
"Over-Soul" and "Spiritual Laws" in the true, calm Spinozistic style--as
if the gentle Jew had come back to earth and dictated his thought,
refined, polished and smooth as one of his own little lenses, to the man
of Concord. Benedictus Concordia, blessing and peace be with thee!

But the lynx-eyed censors soon discovered this single, solitary book of
Spinoza's, and although they failed to locate the author, Spinoza had
the satisfaction of seeing the work placed on the Index and a general
interdict issued against it by Christendom and Judea as well. It was
really of some importance. It was so thoroughly in demand that it still
circulated with false title pages. In the Lenox Library, New York, is a
copy of the first edition, finely bound, and lettered thus: "A Treatise
on the Sailing of Ships against the Wind," which shows the straits
booksellers were put to in evading the censors, and also reveals a touch
of wit that doubtless was appreciated by the Elect.

His modesty, patience, kindness and freedom from all petty whim and
prejudice set Spinoza apart as a marked man. Withal he was eminently
religious, and the reference to him by Novalis as "the God-intoxicated
man" seems especially applicable to one who saw God in everything.

Renan said at the dedication of The Hague monument to Spinoza, "Since
the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we have not seen a life so
profoundly filled with the sentiment of the divine."

When walking along the streets of The Hague and coarse voices called
after him in guttural, "Kill the renegade!" he said calmly, "We must
remember that these men are expressing the e