When Spinoza settled in the Hague, after the publication of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he turned his attention once more to his neglected Ethics, which had already seemed to be near completion in 1665. The comparatively long interval which had elapsed since he had put it aside in order to take up the more urgent work had probably brought with it the need or the desire for not inconsiderable modi fications or elaborations of details, and the Ethics only attained to its final form in 1675. In the meantime, how ever, Spinoza must have devoted his attention also to other things besides the Ethics. While at work on his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus he had again taken up his Hebrew and Biblical studies, and had mastered a mass of political litera ture. In that treatise he was chiefly concerned with the Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION final results of these studies and reflections, and the different departments of thought were necessarily all intermingled. It would naturally occur to him, or some of his friends would suggest to him, that it was desirable to work out each of these subjects independently, and more fully than was possible in the above treatise. Spinoza, while completing and perfecting his Ethics, would accordingly also be pre paring for a scientific treatise on the Hebrew language, for a translation of the Old Testament based on such an exposi tion of the character of Hebrew, and, lastly, for a separate treatise on political theories. By way of a change from theology and politics he would also turn again sometimes to mathematics and physical science, with a view to supple menting his Ethics, some day, by a treatise on natural philo sophy. That Spinoza wished to write such a work on natural philosophy, and also to give a new exposition of the prin ciples of algebra, we know; but he did not live to realise these wishes. His other intentions fared rather better. Spinoza did begin a Hebrew Grammar, a Dutch translation of the Bible, and a Political Treatise. But he seems to have been dissatisfied with his translation, and destroyed what he had done. The Hebrew Grammar remained unfinished, so did the Political Treatise, which, however, was much nearer completion. He has also left an essay On the Rainbow and another On the Calculation of Chances. Very likely he did not begin to write all or any of these while he was still occupied with his Ethics. But he must have been preparing for them, and we are told that at times he was so hard at work that he did not leave his room for days, nor go out of the house for three months at a stretch.
In the meantime black clouds were gathering in the poli tical atmosphere, and a storm was preparing to burst upon the heads of the de Witts and their friends.
Reference has already been made to the war between England and Holland in 1665. That war was concluded in THE LIFE OF SPINOZA Ixxxv 1667, when England was induced to come to terms partly by de Ruyter's daring and successful expedition to Chatham (when the sound of Dutch guns was heard in London), but even more so by the intervention of Louis XIV., who took sides with the Netherlands. Soon afterwards, however, Louis XIV. revived his claims to the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) and led an army there. The Dutch grew alarmed. It was good to have Louis XIV. for a friend, but it was dangerous to have him for a neighbour. Jan de Witt accordingly sought for a means of checking French pre tensions, and succeeded in doing so by means of the Triple Alliance between the Netherlands, England and Sweden. This was in 1668. Louis XIV. meant to be revenged on de Witt. First he started a tariff war with the Netherlands, next he bribed Charles II. (by the Secret Treaty of Dover, 1671), and, in 1672, England and France declared war against the Netherlands, and a French army of 120,000 men invaded the totally unprepared United Provinces. For some time past there had been a growing conspiracy in favour of the young Prince of Orange and against Jan de Witt, who had done his utmost to keep him from power, especially by engineering the " Perpetual Edict " of 1667, which decreed that no Captain-General or Admiral-General of the United Provinces could at the same time be Stadt- holder of a province. The conspiracy now came to a sudden head. There was a cry for the Prince of Orange to take the field and deliver the country as his father had done. The " Perpetual Edict " was swept aside, and its author was not forgotten on the day of reckoning. With the country unprepared, and the enemy carrying all before them, the populace was easily stirred to uncontrollable fury, which had to find vent on a scapegoat. After vain attempts to procure their judicial murder, the mob broke into the prison, at the Hague, while Jan de Witt was visiting his brother Cornelis there, and murdered the two brothers in Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION the most brutal fashion. This happened on the 2oth of August 1672. More than twenty years of the most devoted and able service to the Republic was forgotten in the moment of wrath, and the Prince of Orange, William III. (the future King of England), was not altogether guiltless of the crime.
When Spinoza heard of the horrible tragedy he was quite beside himself. His usual philosophic calm entirely deserted him. He burst into tears, and, distracted with grief and anger, he wrote on a placard his utter abhorrence of "the very lowest of barbarians " who had committed the iniquitous murder. He wanted to go out and post his denunciation near the scene of the crime. Fortunately, Van der Spyck was more discreet. He locked the door, so that Spinoza could not get out to share the fate of the de Witts.
Some time after these terrible events the heirs of Jan de Witt showed some hesitation about continuing Spinoza's pension. Some of the philosopher's friends, when they heard of it, urged him to enforce his legal claims on the strength of the written promise which he possessed. But Spinoza simply returned that document to de Witt's heirs, without any comment. Impressed by his conduct, they continued his pension without any more ado.
The war between France and Holland proved fatal to yet another friend of Spinoza. His old teacher, Van den Enden, had been compelled to leave Amsterdam some years before these events. For a time he stayed in Antwerp, and then settled in Paris. Here his desire to help his own country at that critical period led him to join in a conspiracy to betray Quillebceuf to the Dutch, and to raise a rebellion in Nor mandy. All this would, of course, have greatly helped the Netherlands in their struggle with Louis XIV. But the conspiracy was discovered, and Van den Enden was be headed in front of the Bastille in November 1674. Such was the tragic end of the man who had befriended Spinoza THE LIFE OF SPINOZA Ixxxvii in the early days of his struggle, and who had contributed not a little towards the early development of his scientific thinking.
The war with France had yet further consequences in store for Spinoza. In 1673 the French army under Prince Conde was encamping at Utrecht, and among the officers there was a Colonel Stoupe, who was in charge of a Swiss regiment. Stoupe was an ex-parson, well read, but an adventurer. Conde was a man of liberal views, and inte rested in art, science, and philosophy. And during their enforced idleness at Utrecht, Stoupe suggested that as Spinoza (already famous as the author of the geometric version of Descartes' Principia, and much more so as the author of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus) lived quite near, at the Hague, it would be interesting to get to know him. Conde accordingly sent, through Stoupe, an invitation to Spinoza to visit him at Utrecht. What induced Stoupe to seek the acquaintance of Spinoza seems fairly clear. Though a Calvinist, and at one time a minister of his reli gion, he had brought a regiment of Swiss soldiers to the service of Catholic France against the Calvinist Netherlands. The fact is that he was just an unscrupulous adventurer; at heart (as Bishop Burnet has said of him) he was neither a Protestant nor a Christian, but a man of intrigue and of no virtue. But he was anxious to keep up appearances, and when a countryman of his took him severely to task for helping the Catholics against his own fellow-Calvinists, he tried to defend himself by suggesting that the majority of the Dutch were not Calvinists at all, but heretics of the blackest dye. In a pamphlet which he published about September 1673, he refers to Spinoza as a bad Jew and worse Christian, who had written a treatise with the aim of de stroying all religion and establishing atheism. This book (he added) was, nevertheless, openly sold and widely read, and no Dutchman has taken the trouble to refute it, while Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION its author was, in fact, much sought after by learned men and fashionable ladies, and so on. The object of the invi tation to Spinoza, so far as Stoupe was concerned, was therefore simply to get what information he could that might be turned to account for his self-defence. And such were the terms in which he described Spinoza apparently at the very time when he professed the greatest regard for him!
Spinoza, on the other hand, a dreamer by birth, probably saw in this invitation from Prince Conde a possible opening for peace negotiations, and was anxious to do his duty. He seems to have consulted some people in authority, and whatever they may have thought about it privately, they could certainly see no harm in Spinoza's errand. And so, armed with the necessary safe-conducts, Spinoza made his way to Utrecht in May 1673. He was well received by Count Luxemburg, on behalf of Prince Conde, who had in the meantime been called away, and he was invited to stay there and await the Prince's return. Spinoza's intercourse with the Count, with Stoupe and others there, seems to have been of the friendliest kind, and it is known that he made a very good impression. But when, after waiting several weeks, the news arrived that Conde could not return, Spinoza took his departure. He had been offered a pension if he would dedicate a book to Louis XIV.; but Spinoza was not Stoupe — he was not ready to serve any master for hire. He declined the request, and returned to the Hague.
The people at the Hague had, in the meantime, got wind of Spinoza's visit to the enemy's camp. With mob charity they could give but one meaning to this — Spinoza was a spy. When, therefore, he arrived at the Hague, scowls and stones greeted his return, and Van der Spyck was afraid that the mob would break into the house. Spinoza, however, begged him not to be afraid. " I am innocent," he said, THE LIFE OF SPINOZA Ixxxix "and some of our leading statesmen know why I went to Utrecht. As soon as the people make any noise, I shall go out to them, even if they should do to me what they did to the good de Witts. I am a good Republican, and my desire is the good of the Republic." Apparently Spinoza's frank and fearless bearing in the moment of danger reassured the suspicious people, and he escaped without harm.
The invitation from Prince Conde was not the only compliment paid to Spinoza that year. A more important invitation had reached him in February. It came from the Elector Palatine, Karl Ludwig, the brother of the Princess Elizabeth, who had befriended Descartes. The Elector offered him the Professorship of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. The invitation certainly had considerable attractions, and Spinoza considered it for about six weeks. But, in the first place, he could not make up his mind to become a public teacher after all these years of habitual quietude and retirement. In the second place, he had misgivings about the statement made in the invitation concerning the Prince's confidence that Spinoza would not misuse his freedom in philosophical teaching to disturb the public religion. " I do not know [Spinoza wrote] the limits within which the freedom of my philo sophical teaching would be confined, if I am to avoid all appearance of disturbing the publicly established religion. Religious quarrels do not arise so much from ardent zeal for religion as from men's various dispositions, and the love of contradiction which makes them habitually distort and condemn everything...I have experienced these things in my private and secluded life, how much more should I have to fear them after my promotion to this post of honour." So he acknowledged gracefully the Prince's liberality in offering him the Professorship, and declined it with thanks. There can be no doubt that it was the wisest course, for, besides the reasons stated by Spinoza himself, it must be ff xc INTRODUCTION remembered that he could scarcely tear himself away from his numerous friends in Holland, and that the course of events in his fatherland (as his political writings show) touched him too closely to permit of his going abroad in that critical period. Moreover, though he may not have anticipated quite such an early end as befell him (he died four years afterwards), yet with his state of consumption he could scarcely expect to grow old.
That Spinoza had a large circle of friends and ac quaintances there can be no doubt, though the ascendency of the orthodox and the evil repute of his views compelled people, from sheer prudence, to keep quiet about their knowledge and admiration of him. One of his most devoted friends at the Hague was a Dr. J. M. Lucas, a medical practitioner, who subsequently wrote the oldest extant biography of Spinoza, which breathes the most ardent attachment to the philosopher. Another of his medical friends was Dr. G. H. Schuller, who practised medicine at Amsterdam, but also devoted much time to alchemy and philosophy. It was Schuller who brought Spinoza into contact with one of the most promising of the younger scientists, Tschirnhaus, and, through him, also with the most eminent philosopher of the next generation — Leibniz. Tschirnhaus was a young German Count who had studied at Leyden. In 1674 he made the acquaintance of Schuller at Amsterdam. Having studied Descartes, he was interested to hear all about Spinoza, with whom he soon started a cor respondence, and also came into personal contact towards the end of the same year. In the following summer, 1675, he visited London, where he met Oldenburg and Boyle.
He also visited Paris in the same year, and, on the advice of Spinoza, called on Christian Huygens, who had settled in Paris since 1667, and (it is interesting to compare) had continued to enjoy the profitable patronage of Louis XIV. even during the years of disaster which that King had THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xci inflicted on the Netherlands, while Spinoza had declined even to dedicate a book to him for the sake of a pension. The still interesting correspondence between Spinoza and Tschirnhaus lasted about two years. In 1683 Tschirnhaus published his De Medicina Mentis, dealing with the same problem as Spinoza's Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, and borrowing some of its ideas. But prudence prevented him from mentioning Spinoza, to whom he simply referred as quidam (somebody).
Incidentally Tschirnhaus's visit to London led to a re sumption of the correspondence between Oldenburg and Spinoza, which seems to have been dropped since 1665. Spinoza had sent a copy of his TractatusTheologico-Politicus to Oldenburg, who felt rather shocked by its heterodox views, and expressed himself accordingly in a letter which may not have reached Spinoza, but which, in any case, would probably not have brought about a renewal of their correspondence. The account, however, which Tschirnhaus gave of Spinoza and his views seems to have produced a conciliatory effect on Oldenburg, who thereupon wrote another letter to Spinoza, saying that " a closer consideration of the whole subject had convinced him that he (Spinoza) was far from attempting any injury to true religion and sound philosophy." Spinoza, who had taken no notice of the various "refutations" of his treatise published by various people, was nevertheless anxious to know, and to discuss carefully, the objections which Oldenburg — or, indeed, any reasonable people — had to bring against his views. In the course of his increasingly stiff letters, it turns out that Oldenburg objected to the entire system of Spinoza's philosophy, and that what he wished Spinoza to do was nothing less than to write a kind of philosophic apologetic of orthodox Christianity! Spinoza may well have wondered whether Oldenburg was guilty of stupidity or of hypocrisy.
xcii INTRODUCTION In the meantime Spinoza had finished his Ethics, and was contemplating its immediate publication. He mentioned this to Oldenburg in a letter written at the end of June 1675. Oldenburg replied that he " will not object to receiv ing a few copies of the said treatise " to dispose of among his friends, but asked him to send them in such a way that no one may know of it, and begged him " not to insert any passages which may seem to discourage the practice of religion and virtue."
About the end of July 1676 Spinoza went to Amsterdam to arrange for the publication of the Ethica. What happened there is best told in Spinoza's own words. " While I was negotiating [he writes to Oldenburg] a rumour gained currency that I had in the press a book concerning God, wherein I endeavoured to show that there is no God. This report was believed by many. Thereupon certain theologians, perhaps the authors of the rumour, took occasion to complain of me before the Prince and the Magistrates. Moreover, the stupid Cartesians, being suspected of favouring me, endeavoured to remove the aspersion by abusing everywhere my opinions and writings, a course which they still pursue. When I became aware of this through trustworthy men, who also assured me that the theologians were everywhere lying in wait for me, I determined to put off publishing till I saw how things were going...But matters seem to get worse and worse, and I am still uncertain what to do."
Oldenburg must have felt intensely relieved by the news that the publication of the Ethica had been indefinitely postponed. The poor man had changed indeed. In his early days, hearing of Spinoza's hesitation to publish the equally unorthodox Short Treatise, he had begged Spinoza to ignore the " petty theologians" and to publish. "Come, good sir [he then said], castaway all fear of exciting against you the pigmies of our time. Long enough have we sacri- THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xcii'i ficed to ignorance and pedantry. Let us spread the sails of true knowledge, and explore the recesses of nature more thoroughly than heretofore." He had grown nervous, almost stupidly nervous, since then. It must be remem bered, however, that he had learned an unpleasant lesson in the Tower of London, in 1667, that he was never really a profound thinker, and that his environment, though scien tific, was none too enlightened, Robert Boyle, for instance, regarded his escape from a certain thunderstorm as due to miraculous interposition, and one may well believe that he had strange opinions about the author of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicm, as Tschirnhaus relates. Perhaps it was this very treatise (coupled with " the shades of doubt which," as he confessed, " did sometimes cross his mind ") that first suggested to him the idea of founding the Boyle Lectures for the vindication of Christianity. And Olden burg was sufficiently under the influence of Boyle not only to suspect Spinoza's philosophy, which was defensible enough, but even to suspect his motives, which was quite indefensible, and which Spinoza certainly resented.
The Ethica, then, had to be laid aside, and it was not destined to be published during the author's lifetime. Spinoza now applied himself to the other writings, which have already been enumerated above. The Tractatus Poli- ticus must have engaged most of his attention and interest. From one point of view it was a fine tribute to the memory of that eminent statesman Jan de Witt, whose conduct of affairs received here its fullest philosophical justification. Moreover that liberal regime was rapidly passing away, as Spinoza had good reason to know. The Dutch had arrived at the parting of the ways, and showed a marked tendency to leave the republican highway for the path of monarchy. Like Samuel of old, he was determined solemnly to warn his countrymen. But, above all, he wanted to set before them a vivid exposition of the great principles of all true statesxciv INTRODUCTION xciv INTRODUCTION manship, the supreme ideal of all statecraft. That ideal was the perfection of the individual citizen. This was only attainable where there was security and freedom. And the supreme duty of the State was to secure these two conditions. Democracy was the best form of government. The ideal, however, may also be approached under other forms of government. But whatever the external form may be (and Spinoza must have realised his country's almost irrevocable drift towards monarchy), let not the true ideal be forgotten. The Political Treatise was the " Ethical Will and Testament " which Spinoza left for his country; and it was a dying hand that wrote it, too late to finish it.
Four months before his death Spinoza made the personal acquaintance of Leibniz. About eight years before that already Leibniz had read Spinoza's version of Descartes' Principia, and in 1671 he had sent him a copy of his " Notice of the Progress of Optics." In return Spinoza sent him a copy of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. This book was already known to Leibniz, and had been described by him as " an unbearably free-thinking book." But he did not know till then who its author was, nor did his teacher, Professor Thomas, who had written a " refutation " of it. Leibniz wanted to communicate his discovery to his teacher, with out, however, disclosing more than his diplomacy dictated. " The author of the book," he wrote, " is Benedict Spinoza, a Jew (my Dutch friends write me word) expelled from the Synagogue for his monstrous opinions, but a man of universal learning, and especially eminent in Optics, and in the construction of very fine telescopes." In 1675 Leibniz was in Paris, and there he met Tschirnhaus, who had read a manuscript copy of Spinoza's Ethics, and now communicated some of Spinoza's views to Leibniz. Leibniz grew eager to read the Ethics for himself, and Tschirnhaus wrote to Dr. Schuller to obtain Spinoza's permission to show Leibniz a copy of the Ethics. But THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xcv Spinoza declined. He had no faith in Leibniz, and his distrust was not unfounded. " What [asked Spinoza] takes Leibniz away from Frankfort, and what is he doing in Paris? " Spinoza had reason to suspect that Leibniz was on a mission for the reunion of Protestants and Catholics, which would lead to a joint effort to repress all liberal tendencies, and to suppress freedom of thought and speech, which were so near to his heart. Leibniz's attitude towards these things was certainly unlike Spinoza's, and his subse quent behaviour towards Spinoza rather justified that in stinctive distrust with which Spinoza at first met him. But when Leibniz came to the Hague, in the autumn of 1676, Spinoza's distrust and reserve vanished. Leibniz frequently visited Spinoza in his humble lodgings, and there (as he himself has left on record) " conversed with him often and at great length." He also obtained a first-hand knowledge of Spinoza's Ethics then. During the years which followed Leibniz devoted close attention to the philosophy of Spinoza, and even assimilated some of his ideas, but there was a remarkable lack of common generosity, not to say common honesty, both in the way in which he generally avoided all reference to Spinoza, and also in the tone of his remarks