Spinoza had an inborn passion for clear and consistent thinking. And the great intellectual gifts with which fortune had unstintingly endowed him were abundantly exercised and sharpened in the prolonged study of the Hebrew legal and religious codes. These abound in subtle problems and subtler solutions. And whatever Spinoza may have subsequently thought of their intrinsic merits, yet their value as a mental discipline was undeniable. But this power of penetration was slowly but inevitably bringing him into antagonism with the very sources from which it had drawn strength. Moreover, even quite apart from this sharpening of his reasoning powers, his Hebrew studies provided him also with ample material and stimulus for the exercise of his critical acumen. The spirit of rationalism pervades the whole literature of the Jews of the Spanish period,* and the masterpieces of that literature were the pride of the Jewish refugees from the Peninsula, indeed, of all Jews. In the commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1 167) he found many bold and suggestive hints. In the Preface, ^* See tht writer's Aristotle in Medieval Jewish Thought.
THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxxiii Ibn Ezra states that he " will show no partiality in the exposi tion of the Law/' and although the promise seems bolder than the fulfilment, yet now and again one meets with " a word to the wise " which is just sufficient to direct attention to some inconsistency in Scripture, to the post-Mosaic authorship of certain passages in the so-called Five Books of Moses, or to the different authorship of the first and of the second parts of Isaiah. These hints, obscure as they may seem, justify Ibn Ezra's claim to be called "the father of the Higher Criticism of the Bible/' and they certainly led to Spinoza's subsequent important contributions to this kind of Biblical criticism. In the Guide of the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) his attention was drawn to certain crudities and inconsistencies in Biblical theology, which Maimonides, indeed, tried to explain away, or to reconcile with the requirements of reason, though apparently, in the judgment of Spinoza, with little success. And Mai monides' treatment of the institution of sacrifices as merely a temporary concession or device to wean Israel from idola try could not but suggest to Spinoza that other religious customs, too, were only temporary in character and validity. In the writings of Gersonides (1288-1344) he saw rationalism encroaching on miracles and on prophecy, so as to explain away their supposed supernatural character. Maimonides had already boldly asserted that any passage in the Bible which appeared to conflict with reason must be so re interpreted as to be in harmony with it. This method of "interpreting" Scripture into conformity with reason still seemed to save the priority of the Bible over human reason — though only in appearance. Gersonides went further than that. Frankly admitting the possibility of a real conflict between Reason and Revelation, he openly declared that the Bible " cannot prevent us from holding that to be true which our reason prompts us to believe." Moreover, the tendency towards free thought was very much in the air xxxiv INTRODUCTION ever since the Renaissance, and it affected young Jews as it affected others. For example, in 1628 there arrived in Amsterdam a Jewish scholar, Joseph Delmedigo by name, who had studied at the University of Padua. He was well versed in philosophy, medicine, physics, and mathematics, as well as in Hebrew literature, and he had also studied astronomy under Galileo. He seems to have stayed several years in Amsterdam, where Manasseh ben Israel published a selection of his works for him. He was a remarkable product of that age of conflict between the old and the new. Unsettled by the new spirit of the age, yet faithful to the old, his mind inclined now towards scepticism and again towards mysticism, and his nomad life was at once typical and expressive of a restless, vacillating mind seeking in vain to regain its equilibrium. And, to judge from contemporary complaints, Amsterdam Jewry had not a few of such religious malcontents, and the leaders had to cope with the trouble as best they could. Already in 1623 Samuel da Silva, a Jewish physician at Amsterdam, was called upon to write a defence of the immortality of the soul, and the inspiration of the Bible, against the sceptical views aired by Uriel da Costa. In 1632 Manasseh ben Israel published the first part of his Conciliatory wherein he sought to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of Scrip ture. The Marano refugees, like others who threw off the yoke of Roman Catholicism, turned back to the Bible, and the difficulties which some of them encountered there may have been one of the causes which prompted Manasseh's enterprise. Spinoza, no doubt, knew this book. But he probably appreciated the problems which it attacked much more than the solutions which it offered. And if the Bible already presented difficulties, how extravagant and un warranted must have appeared that elaborate superstructure which the Rabbis had reared upon it " line upon line and precept upon precept "! At all events, Spinoza's difficul- THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxxv ties, in so far as they turned on the narrower problems of the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish ceremonial, were by no means new. They had been clearly realised, and partly dealt with, by others long before him.
As regards the wider philosophical questions, it is difficult to say what Spinoza's philosophy was like at that epoch of his life. One can scarcely suppose that his thought was already systematised into a definite philosophic theory. Most likely his views were as yet but loosely connected, and, in the main, negative rather than positive in tendency. And these views also were, in very large measure, if not exclu sively, suggested to him by Jewish writers. These more philosophical problems, too, were not altogether new, they had been realised, and grappled with, by other Jews before him. The popular conception of Creation (creatio ex nihilo) had been denied by both Ibn Ezra and Gersonides, who maintained the eternity of matter. Crescas (1340-1410) had maintained that God had extension, and the Jewish Mystics taught that Nature was animated. Maimonides had denied that man was the centre of creation, maintaining that each thing exists for its own sake, and Crescas denied the validity of final causes. Maimonides also had suggested the rela tivity of good and evil, and Ibn Ezra and Crescas had maintained a thoroughgoing determinism.
Spinoza, however, felt the accumulated burden of all these problems, and he may already have been sufficiently influenced by Cartesian thought to refuse to accept any unproved assertions. Moreover, Spinoza lacked the power (one is almost inclined to call it a gift) which his Jewish predecessors possessed, namely, the power of detaching their theories from their practical everyday life. However advanced or heterodox their views may have been, yet they were conservative in feeling, and conservative in practice, and observed religious customs just like the most orthodox. Such an attitude may easily be accused of duplicity; but xxxvi INTRODUCTION we do not really explain it by calling it bad names. It is often perfectly honest, and it is to be met with in all creeds, at the present no less than in the past. And, after all, the difference is mostly one of degree rather than of kind. Even Spinoza's feeling remained to the end more conserva tive than his thought. That was why he could not help using the language of religion long after his thought seemed to have emptied it of its religious meaning. At all events he made no secret of his views, and he grew lax in the matter of ceremonial observances, whose theoretic basis no longer appealed to him. The elaborate dietary laws of orthodox Judaism must havebeen something of an obstacle in his inter course with Christian friends, and although he, no doubt, observed these laws for a time from sheer force of habit, even when their raison d'etrehad already lost its hold on him, still he probably got weary of excusing his apparent unsociability on the ground of a custom in which he no longer believed. Moreover, the comparatively liberal religion of his Mennonite and Collegiant * friends, their Quaker-like simplicity, their brotherly equality, their humanitarian repudiation of strife and war, the plain decorum of their prayer-meetings — all this must have tended to make him increasingly dissatisfied with the over-elaborated ceremonial of his own community, and the comparative indecorum of their Synagogue services. On the other hand, his Jewish neighbours were beginning to feel scandalised by this breach of ritual observances, his frequent absence from the Synagogue, and the reports of his attendance at Christian prayer-meetings, especially so, considering that his father and grandfather had held office in the Synagogue, and Baruch himself had been looked upon as a promising " light of the Exile." Mutual distrust de veloped into mutual antipathy. The conservatives could not understand how any one could, merely on account of per sonal inconvenience, deliberately ignore divinely ordained ['. * See p. xli on the character of these sects.
THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxxvii precepts — except from sheer perverseness. They failed to realise that any one who did not accept the divine origin of such customs, and did not see any very obvious moral pur pose in them, would simply not think it worth while sacri ficing time or anything else on their account. And Spinoza himself was almost equally unsympathetic when he failed to realise that customs which seemed a burden to him were nevertheless felt to be a blessing and a privilege by those who sincerely regarded them as divine ordinances, as oppor tunities of serving God; while the apparent indecorum of the Synagogue was largely the outcome of Israel's feeling of familiarity with God. Such mutual misunderstandings neither began nor ended in the days of Spinoza. At all events trouble was brewing. After his father's death Spinoza probably became less cautious than before. He did not entirely sever his connection with the Synagogue, for the Synagogue accounts show that he was present in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, the 5th of December 1655, and made an offering. It was the Sabbath of the Feast of Lights, in memory of the Maccabean uprising against Antiochus Epiphanes, and Spinoza had a warm admiration for all enemies of tyranny — did he not actually picture him self in the guise of Aniellos, the Neapolitan rebel against the tyranny of Spain? That Spinoza should have kept up his connection with the Synagogue stands to reason. He could hardly resist the call of filial piety to recite the mourner's prayer for his father, even as, in the days of his childhood, he had done for his mother. The prayer was innocent enough. Though a " mourner's prayer," it was not a prayer for the dead, in fact it contained no reference what ever to the dead. It was a prayer for peace, and its ground- note was that of praise of God, which, coming at the moment of profoundest sorrow, was regarded as the finest expres sion of resignation and faith. Spinoza could scarcely have taken any serious objection to it, at that time, and on such xxxviii INTRODUCTION an occasion, and he would thus remain attached to the Synagogue during his year of mourning. In the months of September, October, and November fell the anniversaries of the deaths of his sister Miriam, his stepmother, and his mother respectively. He would be expected to attend Synagogue on these occasions, and hardly be disinclined. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find him again in the Synagogue on the 5th of December. In all probability that was not the last occasion either on which he was seen in Synagogue — the anniversary of his father's death, in March 1656, most likely saw him there again. What exactly happened in the interval between March and July 1656 is not certain, though it may not be difficult to con jecture. Possibly some of his young Jewish friends spoke to him on the subject of death — a subject natural enough under the circumstances — and may have been surprised and shocked to hear from him that in his view the Bible did not teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and that, in the Bible, ''soul" was simply synonymous with " life." This might have led up to the more general question of the existence of disembodied spirits or angels, which Spinoza then described as unreal, and mere phantoms of the imagi nation. But what about God? would be the natural rejoinder. God, said Spinoza, was also not incorporeal, but extended. At all events, it was these heretical views which were soon afterwards made the ground of his excommuni cation; but they were not really the whole ground — there were other reasons.
Reference has already been made to the fact that, on the death of their father, Rebekah endeavoured to keep her half-brother from his share in the inheritance. Her idea no doubt was that Spinoza might earn his livelihood, whereas she had nothing wherewith to support herself, and ought therefore to be provided for. Possibly her brother- in-law, de Casseres, a prospective Rabbi, learned in the THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxxix Law, and uncommonly shocked by Spinoza's religious lapses, of which Rebekah probably knew much and told him more, advised her that according to strict Jewish law Spinoza's delinquencies disqualified him from inheriting his father's property. Spinoza naturally resented such high-handed methods, and appealed to the law of the land, which of course took no notice of the subtleties of Rabbinic legislation. Spinoza won his lawsuit, but, realising the moral claims of his sister's position, he refrained from taking anything beyond a bedstead, and that very likely as a memento quite as much as an article of value, or of which he had need. This appeal to the secular arm against his sister hardly tended to make him more popular with his people, however little some of them may have sympathised with her peculiar methods. Moreover, the report of his heresies, on which Rebekah had based her exclusive claims, got abroad and was duly magnified as it passed from mouth to mouth. Meanwhile Spinoza had to earn his bread. He could hardly think of staying with his sister, or with any other relative, after this family quarrel, and he had nothing very definite to fall back upon for his support. Fortunately Van den Enden, realising his pupil's plight, came to his rescue.
Spinoza assisted him in his school, and, in return, Van den Enden provided him with a home and all necessaries at his own house. This, of course, entailed a complete breach with the Jewish dietary laws. But this was not all. Van den Enden, as already remarked, had an evil reputation, and his school was strongly suspected of being a centre for the teaching of atheism. Whether Van den Enden really merited his ill repute is by no means certain. That he was not particularly orthodox in his views may be granted; he knew too much to satisfy the requirements of the zealots. On the other hand, it must be remembered that when Dirck Kerckrinck wooed Clara Maria Van den Enden, he had to turn Roman Catholic before her father consented to xl INTRODUCTION the marriage (1671). Be that as it may, the school had a bad name, and Spinoza's reputation did not improve by his more intimate connection with it. Possibly some of the fathers, who subsequently earned the daily blessings of their sons for taking care in due time " to remove them from the school of so pernicious and impious a master" as Van den Enden was reputed to be, were not slow in fastening some of the blame on his Jewish assistant; and Spinoza, who was as yet too inexperienced to appreciate the wisdom of dis cretion, may have given utterance to many a heterodox thought. If so, the scandalised fathers who repeatedly tried to persuade the city magistrates to close Van den Enden's school, and who actually did succeed in driving him out of Amsterdam eventually, would not keep very quiet about Spinoza, and the Jewish authorities would have good reason to take alarm.
Except by the select few, religious toleration was scarcely understood in those days, even in the Netherlands. That the persecuted turn persecutors has become a truism; it is sad, but it is true. In practice, the cry for religious tolera tion has all too often amounted to this: you have persecuted me long enough now, let me persecute you for a change. At the very commencement of their long struggle against the tyranny of the Inquisition, the mutual intolerance of the various religious sects in the Netherlands caused infinite trouble to William the Silent, and very nearly wrecked their enterprise. As their fortunes improved and the need of union became somewhat less urgent, intolerance became increasingly manifest. The Calvinists, who were in the majority, regarded their Church more or less as the estab lished Church, to which the Reformed clergy tried their utmost to compel all others to conform. When Philip III. made a twelve years' truce with the United Netherlands in 1609, he did so, it is said, in the sinister hope that mutual religious persecutions among the different religious sects THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xli would bring about that fall of the Netherlands which the Spanish troops had failed to effect. Sooth to say, there was considerable justification for that sinister hope. In 1610 the followers of Arminius (Professor of Theology at Leyden, died 1609) presented to the provincial parliament of Holland and West Friesland their Remonstrance * against extreme Calvinism, and the struggle between the Arminians (or Remonstrants) and the extreme Calvinists (or Contra- Remonstrants) culminated in 1619, when the Synod of Dordrecht excommunicated the Arminians, closed their places of worship, and brought about the expulsion of Re monstrant preachers from most of the States. Barneveldt, the political head of the Remonstrants and reputed to have been the greatest statesman of the Netherlands, was exe cuted; Hugo Grotius, one of their most eminent scholars, was thrown into prison, and only escaped from it through the bold ingenuity of his wife. One interesting result of the banishment of Arminian pastors was the formation of the Collegiant sect, which simply decided to dispense with the clerical office altogether, and held more or less informal gatherings (collegia) for prayers and religious discussions conducted entirely by laymen. (The Mennonites, with whom also Spinoza stood in friendly relations, had come into existence under very similar circumstances during the sixteenth century). The events of 1619 show clearly enough the temper of the dominant religious sect in the United Provinces. Fortunately, enlightened statesmen and magis trates generally managed to resist the persecuting zeal of the Reformed or Calvinist clergy. But not always; nor did the zealots relax their efforts in spite of repeated dis couragement. In 1653 the clerical Synods forced the States-General to issue a strict edict against the Socinians * The "five points" of the Remonstrance were (i) conditional election; (ii) universal redemption through Christ; (iii) salvation by grace; (iv) the irresistibleness of grace; and (v) the possibility of falling from a state oi grate.
d xlii INTRODUCTION or Unitarians, many of whom consequently went over to the Collegiants.
After all, then, the decree of toleration embodied in the Union of Utrecht did not secure very much in the way of real toleration. Non-Calvinist Christians were allowed to live in the Netherlands without suffering in person or pro perty on account of their nonconformity. For those days even that was a great deal; but the right of public worship was quite another matter. And if the Union of Utrecht did not secure real toleration for all Christian sects, much less did it guarantee anything to the Jews, who had not been contemplated in it at all, who had not even been formally admitted into the Netherlands, but whose presence had been more or less connived at. Even in 1619, when the Jewish question was definitely raised in the Netherlands, it was decided to allow each city to please itself whether it would permit Jews to live there or not. Their position was precarious indeed. They had to take care not to give offence to the religious susceptibilities of their neighbours. And their troubles commenced soon enough.
About the year 1618 there had arrived in Amsterdam a Marano refugee from Portugal whose name was Gabriel da Costa. Both he and his late father had held office in the Catholic Church, but seized by a sudden longing to return to the religion of his ancestors, Gabriel fled to Amsterdam, where he embraced Judaism and changed his name from Gabriel to Uriel. His ideas about Judaism had been derived chiefly from reading the Old Testament, and his contact with actual Rabbinic Judaism somewhat disappointed him. He thereupon commenced to speak contemptuously of the Jews as Pharisees, and aired his views very freely against the belief in the immortality of the soul, and the inspiration of the Bible. These views were, of course, as much opposed to Christianity as to Judaism. The Jewish physician, de Silva, as already stated, tried to controvert these heretical THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xliii views in a book published in 1623. Da Costa replied, in 1624, with a treatise which was very confused, and which, while accusing de Silva of slander against the author, actually reiterated those heresies. Partly from fear that an outcry might be raised against the Jews as promulgators of heresy, the Jewish authorities excommunicated Uriel da Costa, and as a kind of official repudiation of all responsi bility for him, they communicated the facts to the civil authorities, who thereupon imprisoned him, fined him, and ordered his book to be burned. Shunned by Jews and Christians alike, da Costa found his existence very lonely and intolerable, and in 1633 he made up his mind, as he said, " to become an ape among apes/' and made his peace with the Synagogue. But he soon got quite reckless again, and was excommunicated a second time. Again he grew weary of his isolation, and once more he approached the Synagogue authorities for the removal of the ban. Deter mined not to be duped again, yet reluctant to repel him absolutely, they imposed hard conditions on him. He sub mitted to the conditions — he recanted his sins publicly in the Synagogue, received thirty-nine lashes, and lay pros trate on the threshold of the Synagogue while the congrega tion stepped over him as they passed out. It was a cruel degradation. And so heavily did his humiliation weigh on his mind that he committed suicide soon afterwards. This happened in 1640, and Spinoza must have remembered the scandal.
If the Jewish community in Amsterdam felt it necessary to repudiate, in such drastic manner, their responsibility for Uriel da Costa' s heresies, so as to avoid giving offence to their Christian neighbours, there was every reason why they should feel even greater discomfort on account of Spinoza's heresies in 1656. It was a critical period in the annals of Jewish history. During the Muscovite and Cossack inva sion of Poland (1654-1656) entire Jewish communities 'were xliv INTRODUCTION