heir
censure nor cower at their threat. The thirty days or so in which he was
given to reform passed without discovering in him any change.
Excommunication had to be pronounced. When barely twenty-four years old,
Spinoza found himself cut off from the race of Israel with all the
prescribed curses of excommunication upon his head.

Spinoza was not present when excommunication was pronounced upon him. He
had left Amsterdam to stay with some Collegiant friends on the Ouwerkerk
road, for, so one tradition relates, an attempt had been made by one of
the over-righteous upon Spinoza's life soon after he became an object
of official displeasure. Although Spinoza was, throughout his life,
ready to suffer the consequences of his opinions and actions, he at no
time had the least aspiration to become a martyr. When Spinoza heard of
his excommunication he sent a spirited and unyielding reply. The spirit
if not the words of that reply (not yet discovered) eventually made its
way into the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. For the rest of his life,
whenever he had occasion to refer to the Jews, Spinoza referred to them
as he did to the Gentiles--a race to which he did not belong. And
immediately, with the perfect grace and humor of a cultured mind, he
changed his name from Baruch to Benedict, quite confident one can be as
blessed in Latin as in Hebrew.

The subsequent course of Spinoza's life was almost completely
untroubled, though it was unmitigatingly austere. He took up the trade
of polishing lenses as a means of earning his simple bread. He was
somewhat influenced in his decision by the advice in the _Ethics of the
Fathers_ that every one should do some manual work. But it was also
quite the fashion at that period for learned men, interested in science,
to polish lenses, as a hobby of course, not as a means of support.
Spinoza's choice was not altogether wise in spite of its learned
associations and the fact that he soon gained an enviable reputation as
a young scientist. The early recognition Spinoza received from men like
Henry Oldenburg, the first secretary of the Royal Society, from Robert
Boyle and Huyghens, was hardly adequate recompense for the fine dust he
ground which aggravated his inherited tuberculosis and undoubtedly
considerably hastened his death. Spinoza's accomplishment in his chosen
trade was not merely practical. Many looked forward, with warranted
confidence, to the time when Spinoza would make a distinguished