To judge from the opening passage of his Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, which was written shortly afterwards, the years 1656 to 166o must have been years of storm and stress in Spinoza's mental history. Cut off from kith and kin, and left stranded as the result of his honest attempt to think independently, worldly aims must have seemed at times more alluring than the beck of the spirit. But his higher self won through, partly perhaps with the help of the faith which his unsophisticated friends and disciples placed in knowledge and in him. His new orientation was accomplished by the end of this period. He had learned to view life and its problems from other angles than those of his native environment, and he had acquired a knowledge of a language and a system of concepts more suit able to serve as a vehicle for the great thoughts that were taking shape in his mind, and more suitable, too, for the wider influence which they were destined to exercise. What he needed now was peace and quiet in which to collect his thoughts and reduce them to system. He withdrew accordingly to Rijnsburg, a quiet unworldly village on the old Rhine, about six miles from Leyden.
Life at Rijnsburg (1660-167o) .—Ri jnsburg was the headquarters of the Collegiants. Arrangements for his stay there were no doubt made by his Collegiant friends. He lodged with a surgeon named Hermann Homan, whose humanitarianism is obvious from the inscription on the cottage wall: Alas ! if all men were but wise, And would be good as well, The Earth would be a Paradise, Where now 'tis mostly Hell.
(From Kamphuysen's May Morning). In this cottage (now Het Spinozahuis) Spinoza wrote his Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-being, the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, the greater part of his Geometric Version of Descartes' Principia with the appendix on Metaphysical Thoughts, and the first book of his Ethics. Part of the Short Treatise consists of notes which he had prepared in connection with the study circle in Amsterdam. This circle continued to meet after Spinoza's departure from Amsterdam, and periodically Spinoza sent them the various parts of his Short Treatise and other works for study and discussion. This is clear from Letters VIII. and IX.
(The Correspondence of Spinoza, pp. i o i seq.) and from the closing sentences of the Short Treatise (pp. 149 seq. in A. Wolf's edition). The Short Treatise and the Treatise on the Improve ment of the Understanding were ready in or before April 1662, and were originally intended to be one work, as is clear from Spinoza's third letter to Oldenburg (Correspondence, pp. 98 seq.). Already in these earlier writings Spinoza's attitude is anti Cartesian.
During his stay in Rijnsburg Spinoza met various interesting people. Especially noteworthy are Steno, the founder of modern geology, and Oldenburg, one of the first two secretaries of the Royal Society of London. Steno subsequently turned Roman Catholic and tried to persuade Spinoza to do likewise (see Correspondence, pp. 324 seq.) ; but he has the merit of having recognized in Spinoza "the reformer of the new philosophy." Oldenburg is of special interest in a biography of Spinoza because the most important part of Spinoza's correspondence passed be tween him and Oldenburg. Oldenburg visited Leyden in 1661. His countryman Coccejus was professor there. Spinoza must have acquired a reputation somehow, for Oldenburg went out of his way to visit him in Rijnsburg. The deep impression which
Spinoza made on Oldenburg (who was about 18 years older than Spinoza) is evident from his first letter to Spinoza (see Cor respondence, pp. 73 seq.). In Rijnsburg also Spinoza first met the brothers Koerbagh whose subsequent tragic fate showed how little freedom of thought there really was even in Holland. Casearius, another student at the University of Leyden, came to spend a year or so in Rijnsburg, and stayed in the same cottage as Spinoza, who instructed him in the philosophy of Descartes. For this purpose Spinoza made a geometrical version of the second part of Descartes' Principia. While on a visit to Amster dam, in 1663, Spinoza showed this to his Cartesian friends, who persuaded him to do the same with the first part of the Principia. He did so in a fortnight. These two parts, together with an appendix called Metaphysical Thoughts, were accordingly pub lished by his friends in 1663. L. Meyer wrote the introduction explaining that Spinoza did not really share the views expressed in the book; J. Rieuwertsz was the publisher; and J. Jelles defrayed the cost. This was the only book published in Spinoza's life-time with his name on the title-page. P. Balling prepared a Dutch translation of this book, and published it in Early in 1662 Spinoza had completed the first draft of his philosophy in one work combining the Short Treatise and the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding. He was not satisfied with its style or with its method of exposition. He had tried the dialogue form without success, so he tried the geometrical method, in the manner of Euclid's Elements, which gave him more satisfaction. He therefore decided to lay aside his earlier attempts and make a new start. Thus originated his Ethics, the first book of which was finished, and in the hands of his friends, early in 1663. The title of the whole work was not yet intended to be Ethics, but "On God, the Rational Soul, and the Highest Happiness of Man," and the work was planned in three parts corresponding to the three parts of the title, instead of the five parts into which it eventually developed. The publication of his version of Descartes' Principia was intended to prepare the way for the publication of his own philosophy. For this purpose two things were necessary. He had to secure the patronage of influen tial men who could shield him and his book from the remorseless hostility of the Calvinist clergy and other fanatics, and he had to show to the more philosophically minded people, who were mostly Cartesians, that his rejection of Cartesianism was not due to ignorance (see Correspondence, pp. 123 seq., and The Oldest Biography of Spinoza, pp. 57 seq., 147 seq.). Spinoza appears to have succeeded so far as to win the interest of a few people belonging to the governing class. These afforded him some pro tection, but not sufficient to enable him to publish his philosophy in his life-time. Among these were J. Hudde (who subsequently became Sheriff and then Burgomaster of Amsterdam, and a mem ber of the States of Holland), H. Boxel (Pensionary of Gorkum), C. Burgh (who became Treasurer General of the United Nether lands in 1666), possibly also C. van Beuningen (at one time Burgomaster of Amsterdam) and Jan de Witt (Grand Pensionary of Holland).