hing should have surprised him in a
pupil so daring of question, even at fifteen. And now that he had
shaken off the Ghetto, or rather been shaken off by it, he had
scandalized no less shockingly that Christendom to which the Ghetto
had imagined him apostatizing: he had fearlessly contradicted every
system of the century, the ruling Cartesian philosophy no less than
the creed of the Church, and his plea for freedom of thought had
illustrated it to the full. True, the Low Countries, when freed from
the Spanish rack, had nobly declared for religious freedom, but at a
scientific treatment of the Bible as sacred literature even Dutch
toleration must draw the line, unbeguiled by the appeal to the State
to found itself on true religion and ignore the glossing theologians.
"What evil can be imagined greater for a State than that honorable
men, because they have thoughts of their own and cannot act a lie, are
sent as culprits into exile or led to the scaffold?" Already the
States-General had attached the work containing this question and
forbidden its circulation: now apparently persecution was to reach him
in person, Christendom supplementing what he had long since suffered
from the Jewry. He thought of the fanatical Jew whose attempt to stab
him had driven him to live on the outskirts of Amsterdam even before
the Jews had persuaded the civil magistrates to banish him from their
"new Jerusalem," and in a flash of bitterness the picturesque
Portuguese imprecations of the Rabbinic tribunal seemed to him to be
bearing fruit. "According to the decision of the angels and the
judgment of the saints, with the sanction of the Holy God and the
whole congregation, we excommunicate, expel, curse, and execrate
Baruch de Espinoza before the holy books.... Cursed be he by day, and
cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lieth down, and cursed be
he when he riseth up; cursed be he when he goeth out, and cursed be he
when he cometh in. May God never forgive him! His anger and His
passion shall be kindled against this man, on whom rest all the curses
and execrations which are written in the Holy Scriptures...." Had the
words been lurking at the back of his mind, when he was writing the
_Tractatus_? he asked himself, troubled to find them still in his
memory. Had resentment colored the Jewish sections? Had his hot
Spanish blood kept the memory of the dagger that had tried to spill
it? Had suffering biassed the impersonality of his intellect?