The Life and Writings of Spinoza

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SPINOZA Early Years was born in Amsterdam on November 24, 1632. The house in which he first saw the light, and in which he passed his early years, occupied the site of what is now No. 41, Waterlooplein. His grandfather (Abraham) and his father (Michael) were Portuguese crypto-Jews, that is, de scendants of Jews whom the Inquisition had compelled to embrace Christianity but who remained Jews at heart. When the Nether lands revolted against Spain and the Spanish Inquisition, in 1567, and the Union of Utrecht decreed, in 1579, that "every citizen shall remain free in his religion," many crypto-Jews in Spain and Portugal turned their eyes to Holland in the hope of finding refuge there from their common oppressors. The destruction of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, probably favoured schemes of escape. So in 1593 the first batch of Jewish refugees arrived in Amsterdam. Among these early arrivals were Spinoza's father and grandfather. They hailed from Vidigueira, near Beja, in the South of Portugal, but appear to have stayed for a while in Nantes (France) before settling in Amsterdam. Spinoza's mother came from Lisbon. She died in 1638, when Spinoza was barely six years old.

The Spinozas were fairly well-to-do merchants. Spinoza's grandfather was regarded as the head of the Amsterdam Jewish community from about 1628 onwards, and Spinoza's father was Warden of his synagogue on many occasions, also Warden of the Jewish School, and President of a Jewish Charity which granted loans free of interest. Under the circumstances it may be assumed that Spinoza attended the school for Jewish boys, founded about 1638. The curriculum of this school is well known, so we have a sufficiently clear idea of Spinoza's early education. The school hours were 8 till II A.M. and 2 till 5 P.M. The subjects were all Hebrew—the Old Testament, the Talmud, Hebrew Codes, and the works of Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, Crescas and others. Outside school hours the boys had private lessons in secular subjects. The vernacular used in the Jewish school and in Jewish homes was Spanish. Spinoza learned Latin from a German scholar, Jeremiah Felbinger, who may also have taught him German. Spanish and Portuguese Spinoza learned from his father, Dutch from his en vironment, and he also knew some French and Italian. When exactly he learned mathematics and physics is not known. There were plenty of Hebrew books dealing with these sciences, and the Jewish School had a good lending library, so that Spinoza may have commenced these studies during his school years. Hence probably his choice of the profession of a maker of lenses.

Of Spinoza's teachers at the Jewish School the most eminent were Saul Morteira and Manasseh ben Israel. Morteira was born in Venice in 1596, and studied medicine under Montalto, the crypto-Jewish Court physician of Maria de Medici. He came to

Amsterdam in 1616, and in 1638 was elected presiding Rabbi of the Amsterdam synagogues. Manasseh ben Israel was born in Lisbon in 1604. His father was one of 150 Jews whom the Inquisition condemned to the flames in 1605. They managed to save their lives at the expense of their fortunes, and fled at the earliest opportunity. Manasseh's parents brought him to Amsterdam about 1606. In 1622 he became the youthful Rabbi of one of the Amsterdam synagogues (the "Habitation of Peace"). In 1627 he started a Hebrew printing press, and in 1640 he was appointed to one of the senior posts in the Jewish School.

In March 1654 Spinoza's father died. There was some litiga tion over the estate, as Spinoza's only surviving step-sister claimed it all. Spinoza won the lawsuit, but allowed her to retain nearly everything. Henceforth Spinoza had to fend for himself.

Critical Years

(1654-1656).—Spinoza was in his twenty second year when his father died. His studies so far had been mainly Jewish. But he was an independent thinker and he had found more than enough in his Jewish studies to wean him from orthodox theology. In the Biblical commentary by Abraham Ibn Ezra (1o92-1167) one meets with many "a word to the wise" directing attention to some inconsistency in Scripture, to the post Mosaic authorship of parts at least of the so-called "Five Books of Moses," or to the different authorship of the two parts of Isaiah. In the Guide of the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) attention is drawn to various crudities in Biblical theology, and to the provisional character of certain Biblical ordinances. In the writings of Gersonides (1288-1344) rational ism encroaches on miracles and prophecy in an attempt to eliminate the element of supernaturalism. Already Maimonides had insisted on interpreting Scripture in such a way as to har monize it with reason. Gersonides went further than that. He faced the possibility of a conflict between Reason and Revelation, and maintained that, in such an event, the Bible "cannot prevent us from holding that to be true which our reason prompts us to believe." Again, the popular conception of the world's creation out of nothing was denied by both Ibn Ezra and Gersonides, who believed in the eternity of matter. Maimonides also repudiated the belief that man is the centre of creation, maintaining that each thing exists for its own, not for man's, sake; he also sug gested the relativity of good and evil. The Jewish Mystics had taught that Nature is animated. Crescas (1340-141o) ascribed extension to God, denied the validity of the conception of final causes (or the explanation of objects and events by reference to their alleged purposes), and, like Ibn Ezra, maintained a thoroughgoing determinism. Here was food enough for thought, and incentive enough for heresy.