BENEDICT DE, the greatest pantheist the world has yet seen, was the son of a Jewish merchant of Portugal, who had migrated into Holland some time before the date of the philosopher's birth, which occurred at Amsterdam on the 24th November 1632, the same year in which John Locke was born. For the Hebrew name Baruch, which he received at his baptism, he afterwards substituted the Latin equivalent Benedictus. His family, which was poor, committed his education to the hands of the rabbis, and his instructors discovered very early what a treasure they had received in Baruch Spinoza. His mind was exceedingly quick and penetrating; he read and re-read the sacred Scriptures, which were prescribed to him for study, and used to perplex the chief rabbin, Moses Morteira, with the frequency of his puzzling questions, which no one had deigned to put since the days of the oldest patriarch. With the same industry and intelligence he perused the Talmud, and with a similar result. The rabbis shook their heads gravely, and knew not how it might turn out. Their pupil was so earnest and simple, so honest and truthful, in all his inquiries, that they were quite at their wits-end what to make of him. Had he been an immoral boy, they could readily have found a convenient source for his interrogatories in the father of lies. But the lad's goodness rendered such a supposition absurd. The quiet and decided manner in which he went about the tasks assigned to him by the rabbis, and the unconscious daring which he had manifested in his inquiries into the Holy Scriptures and the Talmud, required of his instructors a larger measure of intelligence than they had been blessed with, and a greater degree of patient watchfulness than they had ever been accustomed to employ. His friends now induced him to commence the study of the Latin language, and he accordingly received his first lessons from a German doctor. This last act presented a fresh source of alarm to the minds of the faithful rabbis. They tax all their vigilance, and by the aid of two young spies, try to entrap their gentle pupil. Spinoza is now in danger, for the frantic rage of a Dutch mob is no slight matter. On investigation it is found that he has had the audacity occasionally to absent himself from the Jewish synagogue. It further appears that he cannot be brought to make a promise of greater regularity even at the expense of bribery. One thousand florins, a large sum for a Jew, have been privately tendered to him to acknowledge the authority of these bearded prophets; but Spinoza, who, in the depths of his confused wanderings, has discovered some gleams of honesty flickering through the dim vaults of his own soul, replies with great calmness and decision that he is not a hypocrite. "Not," says he, "if the pension were tenfold." The engines of the ancient faith are now summoned, and Baruch Spinoza is excommunicated from the fellowship of the faithful, by the dark and horrible appliances known only to the Jewish Church. Spinoza is told of what has happened at the synagogue. His answer he concludes in these words: "I know no better than they what is to become of me; but I have taken nothing which is not mine, and I have done no one any wrong, whatever I may suffer." Father and mother and sisters (for Spinoza had two of them, who were subsequently distinguished by all the grovelling avarice of their race) are now positively forbidden his society, and the quiet lad must seek his occupation and companionship wheresoever he may. Still eager for knowledge, he attached himself to a learned physician, Francis Van den Ende, who was reported not to be so strict as his neighbours in matters of religion, and who kept a school for the better class of young Dutchmen, or others who chose to avail themselves of his instructions. In this school Spinoza became a tutor in mathematics and modern languages, and received in return a knowledge of the Latin language, and some say also of the Greek. His tutor in Latin was the clever daughter of his superior, who, in spite of a tendency to corpulency and other personal defects, gained quite a hold on the affections of the excommunicated Jew. The honest usher would have married the girl, had not a more attractive object to female vanity been found in a certain Herr Kerkering, a rich young merchant from Hamburg, who had likewise taken lessons from the same teacher. The pearl necklaces, and other finery adapted to the female taste, had their due effect, and the blushing Van den Ende, though greatly against her will, was induced to follow to the altar the gay merchant of Hamburg, and to leave Spinoza to heal the wound his heart had received as best he might. The young philosopher took his jilting as quietly as became one of his profession, and applied himself with increased assiduity to his physical and metaphysical studies.

But Spinoza had not yet done with the Jews. Passing by the old Jewish synagogue one night, he received the thrust of a dagger, which just grazed his side, and which was aimed at him by a fanatic of the religion he had just renounced. The cunning rabbis now resolved secretly to destroy the school where he had lately found an asylum. They circulated rumours of the atheism of the superior, and Van den Ende was banished out of Holland. This unfortunate man afterwards sealed his patriotism with his life at Paris in 1674.

Meanwhile Spinoza had to provide for his necessities as he could, and he took to the fashioning of glass lenses, which he came to grind with singular accuracy. With the exception of some time spent in learning the rudiments of drawing, he devoted his whole life to his lenses; that is to say, all the time which he found it necessary to expend upon labour for which he could fairly expect remuneration. As for the rest of his time, what one might misname his leisure hours, he devoted exclusively to speculation. Truth was the lodestar to which he constantly turned, and provided people would only let him alone, he was content to pursue undisturbed his scientific researches, careless alike of what is called fame, or of the noisy reputation which the crowd bestows upon the objects of its admiration. Spinoza was not an ascetic. He dressed himself plainly and neatly; but affected no gaities such as did not become his position. His fare was exceedingly simple, formed for the most part of alternations of gruel and mutton broth. His health, certainly, was not robust, and hence, there was an additional reason for the simplicity of his fare. The only luxury he indulged in was a pipe of tobacco. He was of middle stature, of a pleasant countenance, with piercing eyes, a slightly dusky skin and black hair; a good specimen, in short, of a Spanish Jew. Thus did this outcast Hebrew live and work, always gentle and good-humoured, with a kind word and a kind smile for every one.

Spinoza dwelt for some time in 1660 with a familiar acquaintance, who lived between Amsterdam and Auwerkerke. In 1661 he withdrew to the village of Rhynsburg, where he remained for the next four years. It was during his residence here that his friends prevailed upon him to give to the world his first publication, *Cartesii Principia Philosophiae more geometrico demonstrata*, and added, by way of appendix, *Cogitata Metaphysica*. This work appeared in 1663, with a preface from Louis Meyer, a physician of Amsterdam, who was kind enough to introduce this shy youth to the public. Spinoza had brought a more logical intellect to the study of his subject than its great author could pretend to, and hence his representation of Descartes' philosophy was the clearest and the most concise in existence. This small treatise by the obscure Jew flew over all Europe, and speculators, great and small, were anxious to make his acquaintance. The most notable of the correspondents of this year which have been preserved were Henry Oldenburg, Simon de Vries, and Louis Meyer. In 1664, he accepted an invitation from Jan de Witt, the greatest statesman in Holland, to go to the Hague. He subsequently received from this courtier a pension of L.35 a year. Accordingly, in the month of June we find him removed to Voorburg, some miles from the Hague, which he exchanged, for greater convenience, for a boarding-house, kept by a widow, Van Velden, who lived on the quay. It was in this house that honest old Pastor Colerus, some time before 1698, hired the room once occupied by the philosopher, as bed-room, eating-room, and study, and from which this Protestant clergyman strove to realize to himself something of the man who had once lived and worked there. It was during his residence here he published his *Tractatus Theologico-Politicus*, 1670. The whole of Christendom almost rose in arms against Spinoza, but this did not disturb the philosopher, nor does it seem to have troubled his cogitations. Curious to say, some of the most eminent divines of the present day have held principles exactly similar to those promulgated in this *Tractatus*; but three centuries do much to clear the human vision. Finding this place too expensive (for he must now save time for his books), Spinoza, in 1671, crossed the street to the house of a painter named Van der Suyck, where he spent the remainder of his life. Good, fussy old Colerus gives many a pleasant picture of Spinoza's residence in this household, which cannot here be dwelt upon. Suffice it to say, that the philosopher lost nothing of his honesty and simplicity of character. Sometimes, when wearied with his meditations, he would draw the children of the family around him, and amuse them by showing them insects in the microscope. He betrayed an interest in all manner of creatures, and a spider-fight would make him laugh immoderately. He usually joined the family in hearing the preaching of Dr Cordes, a good Protestant pastor, and when the day was over, the great philosopher would permit the children of Van der Spyck to scramble all over him. Getting them adjusted he would tell them pleasant stories, and breathe over them an atmosphere of gentle solemnity. He would speak to them of their Father in heaven, and one day, he tells them, if they be good children, they may go there to him. And admonishing them to love their earthly parents, and to be kind to one another, he lets his young charge go for the night. This does not look like irreligion, let Pierre Bayle and others croak as they please about atheism.

The year of his removal to Voerburg was the date of his letters to William de Blyenburg, a clever, vain sort of man, who tried, by a rather fulsome letter, to induce Spinoza to write to him. The correspondence soon broke off; however, as Spinoza saw it would be fruitless. The year 1672 was a gloomy one for Spinoza, and for the state of Holland. He lost his best friend, the statesman, Jan de Witt, who was murdered by a frantic mob in the prison of the Hague. This was the only occasion on which the philosopher is said to have displayed violent emotion. He wept like a child, and is said ever afterwards to have avoided the recollection of the scene. Simon de Vries, a wealthy young student of Amsterdam, had for some time been a correspondent of Spinoza's on his darling subject. Coming to the Hague one day, De Vries called on Spinoza, and would have him accept a present of 2000 florins. He had to go sorrowfully away, however, for his simple master had no relish for florins. Shortly after the poor youth died. Spinoza hearing he had been mentioned in his will, hastened to the spot, and could only be prevailed upon by the brother of the deceased to accept of 300 florins. In 1673 Dr Fabbritius wrote to Spinoza from the University of Heidelberg, by the Elector Palatine's orders, inviting him to remove thither, and fill the chair of philosophy, cum amplissima philosophandi libertate. This would not have been an unpleasant invitation to Spinoza, now that his pension and his friend were gone; but as one of the conditions was the elector's hope that the philosopher would contrive to avoid collision with existing beliefs, Spinoza did not see clearly "within what limits his philosophy could be restrained," and so he modestly declined. Still the same directness and unconsciousness; still the old simplicity of genius. A professor, he said in addition, was an exalted person, and he had lived all his life as a poor workman; so he resolved to stay with Van der Spyck.

The Ethica was now finished, which had cost Spinoza ten of the best years of his life. But when a man does a thing really well, no questions are asked as to the time he expended on it. Spinoza tried to publish this work in the city of Amsterdam, but the troubled state of the theological atmosphere withheld him. The remaining years of his life were employed on a political treatise on the theory of human society, which he did not live to finish; a Hebrew Grammar, also unfinished; and a translation of the Pentateuch, which he destroyed a day or two before his death. Leibnitz had heard of his matchless skill in constructing optical glasses, and he wrote Spinoza one or two letters regarding it, which may be seen, with the optician's answer, in Epistolae 51, 52 of his Opera. Spinoza, as has been already mentioned, was a man of very delicate health, and so assiduously had he kept at his duties that he was frequently not seen for many days at a time. A strong frame would have bent under such constant application to the most abstruse studies, and Spinoza had to pay the penalty of his devotion to truth by being prematurely removed from the working world. He had given symptoms of consumption at a very early period, and that insatiable vampire gradually sucked out his life-blood. Here is Colerus's account of his last hours, leaving Bayle's and the rest of them for those who have a relish for such things. On the 21st of February 1677, being the communion Sabbath with the Hague Protestants, the Van der Spyck family were at church. Spinoza, who had been a good deal worse than usual, sent the day previously for Louis Meyer, the physician of Amsterdam. With this friend he had talked about the publication of his Ethica, and other matters relating to its effects when he was gone, when the summons came upon him quite suddenly. Van der Spyck returned from church to gaze upon the glassy eyes of what, a short while before, had been his dear friend Benedict Spinoza. He died at the comparatively early age of forty-four years.

There were published after the death of Spinoza, in 1677, his Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata et in quinque partes distincta; his Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione; his Tractatus Politicus; his Epistolae; and his Compendium Grammaticae Linguae Hebraeae. The edition used in preparing this article is the Benedicti de Spinoza Opera quae supersunt omnia, by C. H. Bruder, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1843.

Numerous biographies, of more or less merit, have been written of Spinoza, of which we may mention the one published at Utrecht, in 1698, by the Lutheran pastor, Johann Colerus, as, with all its faults, unquestionably the best. This book was published in French, at the Hague in 1706. There was issued from the Brussels press, in 1731, Refutation des Erreurs de Benoît de Spinoza, par M. de Fenelon, archevêque de Cambrai, par P. Lamy, et par M. le Comte de Boullainvilliers, avec la Vie de Spinoza, écrite par M. Jean Colerus, augmented by a number of particulars drawn from a manuscript of the philosopher's life, made by one of his friends. There is likewise the unfortunate life, or rather caricature, of Spinoza in Bayle's Dictionnaire, Amsterdam, 1740. Francis Halma published at Utrecht, in 1698, Het Leven Van Ben. de Spinoza, with some notice of his writings. There is likewise La Vie de Spinoza par un de ses Disciples, Amsterdam, 1719; and another Vie, by another of his disciples, Hamburg, 1735; and a Leben B. Von Spinoza, by J. M. Philippan, Braunschweig, 1790. He is taken up besides in the collections of N. Barnabite, of Kortholt, and of Saverien. Biographies of Spinoza have likewise been written by the various editors of his works. Among the more recent are Paulus, Gfrörer, Auerbach, Orelli, Bruder, Saintes, and Damiron. Notices of his life have likewise appeared in English in the Oxford and Cambridge Review for 1847, and in the Westminster Review for 1843. These articles have been attributed respectively to Froude, the historian, and to Lewes, author of the Life of Goethe. Some fifty authors, of all shades of ability, have written against Spinoza in Latin, Dutch, German, French, and English.

For an analysis of the Ethica, and for a critical estimate of its principles, the reader is referred to the article Pantheism.

We shall close this biography with a remark or two on the method and spirit of Spinoza's great work. The Ethica is logically considered the most perfect book in existence; psychologically, it is one of the most fallacious. Any one who chooses to employ a method of rigorous deduction upon which to construct the universe, must hail the Ethica as the paragon of all books that have ever emanated from the human brain. But the man who, while very anxious to get his knowledge into a strictly deducible order, finds, nevertheless, at every step of his preliminary inquiries, that his attention is constantly deflected into the multitudinous and conflicting channel of details that surrounds him, must imperiously feel the utter futility of all logical The character of Spinoza is naturally one of the most devout on record, for his life was, in a manner, one unbroken hymn. He was not a pious man, as that word is now usually understood, for he was not a Christian, at least in profession. He had much conversation with the sect of the Mennonites, but it does not appear that he ever subscribed to their faith. Some of the greatest minds which the world has known have owned his superiority, and have loudly proclaimed his fame. Among these not the least illustrious are Novalis, Schleiermacher, Lessing, and Goethe. All these men have bowed down before his intellectual superior in the sphere of reasoning, and have looked up worshipfully to Spinoza, as to their human master, in much that pertained to the nature and the character of Deity. Novalis calls him a "god-intoxicated man," and Schleiermacher calls upon all thinkers to offer up with him "a lock of hair to the manes of the holy but persecuted Spinoza." The thought of these men, all gifted more or less with the highest forms of genius, and widely different in all that can constitute character, finding a common bond of brotherhood in the speculations of this obscure Jew, is suggestive of much curious thought. There is one thing which must have struck the more patient readers of the Ethica, and which is likely, more or less, to have been the source of attraction, whether consciously or unconsciously, to all the higher minds who have felt themselves drawn towards the book. It is the deep religious feeling with which it is written. One cannot term it ethical, the word is much too cold to express the thought. The book is in a manner saturated with religiousness. Not that it is so observable in the particular language of any portion of it. It lurks in the hidden depths, from which both thought and language flowed. It floods over, as it were, all the dry propositional details in which the book abounds. It permeates them. It flows round them, over them, beneath them, and through them, with its mysterious motion, covering all that it touches with a kind of sacredness. It is this, much more than the matter of which the book is constituted, which has gained for it so wide a sympathy among all the finer minds who have been brought into contact with it. But it is precisely on this account that the book is calculated not to benefit clever readers, who are not constitutionally thoughtful, who do not see the open secret of this world. It is because the dry skeleton holds so well together, that readers of a certain type are almost sure to wrench it from the deep basis of feeling on which it naturally rests, and drag it out vauntingly before the world. To such persons the work is like the sphinx of old, it devours those who cannot solve its mysteries. It is perhaps as much what men, drawn to the Ethica, think into it, that constitutes its main excellence to them, as what they are capable of extracting from its stubborn propositions.