Part 2 (1/2)

He practiced what he preached. In his choice of accommodations, for example, the philosopher showed complete indifference to the value of good real estate. In Rijnsburg from 1661 to 1663, in Voorburg from 1663 to 1670, and in The Hague from 1670 to 1677, he always boarded in small rented rooms in other people's houses on the less expensive side of the ca.n.a.ls.

When it came to feeding the body, too, the philosopher kept to a rather austere economy. Colerus, who had the opportunity to peruse some of his receipts, reports that on one day he ate only ”gruel made with raisins and b.u.t.ter.” On another day he survived entirely on ”milk soup with b.u.t.ter” washed down with ”a pot of beer.”(Beer was like water in those days-that is to say, it was watery, and it was much safer to drink than the stuff they pumped out of the brackish wells. Georg Hermann Schuller, Leibniz's friend and liaison in Holland, incidentally, is on record as having sent Spinoza a keg of beer as a gift.) The philosopher's wine consumption peaked at ”only” two and a half pints of wine in the course of one month. ”It is scarce credible how sober and frugal he was all the time,” Colerus concludes. His one indulgence was tobacco, which he consumed avidly from a pipe.

His enthusiasm for sartorial fas.h.i.+ons seems to have been no less restrained than that for the pleasures of the palate. Colerus says that his wardrobe was ”plain and common” and that ”he paid no heed to his dress.” Lucas is perhaps more credible when he insists that Spinoza was modest but not careless in his appearance: there was something about his clothes ”which usually distinguishes a gentleman from a pedant,” he says, adding that the philosopher maintained that ”the affectation of negligence is the mark of an inferior mind.” The inventory taken after the philosopher's death seems to confirm Lucas's account: Spinoza's wardrobe was small and efficient (the two pairs of trousers and seven s.h.i.+rts suggest a rigorous schedule for laundry); but some of it, at least, was of fine quality (e.g., his shoe buckles were silver).

Nor was the philosopher much of a saver. ”My relatives shall inherit nothing from me, just as they have left me nothing,” he once claimed. Upon his death, his sister Rebecca-who very likely had not seen her brother for twenty years-swooped down to The Hague just to be sure. True to his word, he left behind an estate of so little value that, after the funeral expenses were paid and other debts settled, there was nothing left over for greedy relatives. Rebecca hastily withdrew her claim for fear that she might actually lose money in the bargain.

Of course, according to the rules of the early treatise, a philosopher must acquire at least enough money to survive in good health. During his dark period, therefore, Spinoza learned a trade: lens making. In the late seventeenth century, the fabrication of lenses for telescopes and microscopes was an art more than a craft. The lens maker began by placing a slab of gla.s.s on a foot-powered lathe. Then, feet pumping, he applied an abrasive cloth to the spinning slab, sending gla.s.s dust billowing into the room, coating the machine, the floor, his clothes, and his lungs. After shaving the lens down to within fractions of a millimeter of a precisely specified curve, he vigorously buffed the rough surface in order to achieve a transparent finish. The process required patience, meticulous attention to detail, and a taste for solitary work. It was perhaps ideally suited to Spinoza's skills, temperament, and economic needs. Sadly, the constant exposure to gla.s.s dust very likely aggravated the chronic lung disease that would eventually claim his life.

By all accounts, Spinoza was a superb lens maker. Leibniz himself referred several times to the Dutchman's ”fame” in the field of optics. Christiaan Huygens, an expert in the field himself, wrote to his brother that ”the Israelite achieves an admirable polish.” The lenses found among Spinoza's possessions after his death sold at high values in the auction of his estate.

As he grew older, Spinoza possibly came to rely more on another source of income: the charity of philosophical friends and admirers. The most generous benefactor was Simon de Vries, the scion of a merchant family and the philosopher's friend from his days as a trader in Amsterdam. De Vries died young in 1667, and in his will he provided for an annuity to the philosopher in the amount of 500 guilders. Spinoza refused to accept so large an amount, for, according to Lucas and Colerus, he did not wish to be seen as dependent on the largesse of another man. Instead, he insisted on reducing the grant to 300 guilders per year (or 250, depending on the source). Whether he collected the amount every year thereafter is not altogether certain; Leibniz in 1676 formed the impression that Spinoza's patron was the merchant Jarig Jelles, a friend of the philosopher from his Amsterdam years.

In a curious letter to Jelles, Spinoza uses a story about Thales of Miletus to ill.u.s.trate his own att.i.tude toward money. Fed up with being reproached for poverty by his friends, it seems, the ancient philosopher one day used his superior meteorological knowledge to make a killing in the market for olive presses. Then, his point proved, he donated all of the profits to good causes. The moral of the story is that ”it is not out of necessity but out of choice that the wise possess no riches.” There can be no doubt that Spinoza, like Thales, had little concern for money. But it should not be overlooked that, as the very fact that he wrote this letter suggests, he was quite concerned to make sure that others were well aware of his lack of concern.

HAVING LEARNED TO live with little money, Spinoza may have managed to get by with no love at all. According to the story handed down by Colerus, the young philosopher conceived of an amorous pa.s.sion for his tutor in Latin, Clara Maria, the eldest daughter of Frans van den Enden. Smitten by the sprightly yet malformed la.s.s, says the biographer, Spinoza declared many times that he intended to marry her. live with little money, Spinoza may have managed to get by with no love at all. According to the story handed down by Colerus, the young philosopher conceived of an amorous pa.s.sion for his tutor in Latin, Clara Maria, the eldest daughter of Frans van den Enden. Smitten by the sprightly yet malformed la.s.s, says the biographer, Spinoza declared many times that he intended to marry her.

Alas, a rival soon darkened the philosopher's star of love. Thomas Kerkering, a native of Hamburg and Spinoza's fellow student at the van den Enden school, also succ.u.mbed to Clara Maria's peculiar charms. The young German apparently knew better than the philosopher how to play the game of love. He courted the nubile Latinist a.s.siduously, amply proving his ardor with the gift of a pearl necklace of great value. Clara Maria gave her heart and her hand-and, one presumes, her neck-to Kerkering, while Spinoza was left to taste the bitter fruit of rejection.

The story is perfectly plausible, but far from confirmed. Clara Maria was in fact Spinoza's Latin tutor, and she did marry a man named Thomas Kerkering, who was a pupil in the van den Enden school. The marriage took place in 1671, however, and the bride was listed as twenty-seven years old at the time-which would make her twelve to fourteen in the years when Spinoza, then in his early twenties, lived under the family roof. It is possible, of course, that Clara Maria lied about her age on the event of her wedding; but it would be unwise to discount the possibility that Spinoza's first chroniclers, having raised their eyebrows over the unseemly fact that his tutor in Latin was a girl, relied on their imaginations to supply the rest of the story of his unrequited love.

In any case, whether or not Spinoza's interest in Clara Maria went beyond her formidable Latin skills, the fact remains that his life story offers nothing but a thwarted and possibly fictional student affair in the way of romance or carnal love. Some modern interpreters take Spinoza's abject refusal to provide entertaining material for future filmmakers as proof that he was a misogynist, h.o.m.os.e.xual, or both, and that his philosophy therefore represents a hyperrationalistic refuge from the demands of s.e.xuality. However, there is no meaningful evidence in support of any such claims.

More to the point, Spinoza's failure to marry or at least tell us more about his s.e.x life seems to have no very deep connection with his philosophical program. In the Ethics Ethics he declares that marriage is ”in harmony with reason.” Lucas confirms that ”our philosopher was not one of those austere people who look upon marriage as a hindrance to the activities of the mind.” If he decided to forgo the charms of Clara Maria or any other possible love object, it was presumably because he did not view such relations as the best way to advance his own life of the mind. It should also be pointed out that his choice of a low-income lifestyle, his chronic illness, and his unenviable social status as an apostate Jew would hardly have made him an appealing prospect for the girls of Holland. he declares that marriage is ”in harmony with reason.” Lucas confirms that ”our philosopher was not one of those austere people who look upon marriage as a hindrance to the activities of the mind.” If he decided to forgo the charms of Clara Maria or any other possible love object, it was presumably because he did not view such relations as the best way to advance his own life of the mind. It should also be pointed out that his choice of a low-income lifestyle, his chronic illness, and his unenviable social status as an apostate Jew would hardly have made him an appealing prospect for the girls of Holland.

More generally, the position Spinoza takes in his philosophical works toward sensual pleasure is not at all that of a traditional ascetic. Far from denying the value of pleasure, s.e.xual or otherwise, he comes closer to advocating its maximization. In the Ethics Ethics, for example, he writes: ...it is part of the wise man to recreate and refresh himself with pleasant food and drink, and also with perfumes, with the soft beauty of growing plants, with dress, with music, with many sports, with theatres, and the like, such as every man may make use of without injury to his neighbor. For the human body is composed of numerous parts of diverse nature, which continually stand in need of fresh and varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of performing all the actions which follow of necessity from its own nature; and consequently, so that the mind may also be equally capable of understanding many things simultaneously.

Here Spinoza seems positively hedonistic in his celebratory list of sensual goodies-until, that is, one gets to the end of the pa.s.sage. For the central point, as in the earlier Treatise Treatise, is that sensual pleasure is all well and good-but its only real purpose is to contribute to the all-important project of sustaining the mind for a life of contemplation. A few pages later, Spinoza makes the point explicitly: ”Things are good only insofar as they a.s.sist a man to enjoy the life of the mind.”

There is in Spinoza's thought on this point an illuminating paradox-one that ultimately sheds light more on questions of philosophy than biography. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that Spinoza lived a ”life of the mind.” Dress, music, sports, and carnal love always took a backseat to his ”studies” (specifically, his ”late-night studies,” as he puts it in a letter to de Vries, for his lens-grinding activities occupied the daylight hours). Like so many philosophers before and after, he seemed to exhibit a certain alienation from the hurly-burly of ordinary life, a detachment from the body, a degree of otherworldliness. Following Plato, one might be tempted to say that he lived in the world of ideas-a world that exists outside the cave within which ordinary experience takes place. If his domestic arrangements were ever to be reviewed in a contemporary lifestyle journal, we can be sure that they would be described as ”spiritual.”

On the other hand, in the philosophical system that emerged from those candlelit nights, there is no s.p.a.ce for an ”other” world. There are no spirits, and there is no ”mind” there is nothing outside the cave. Everything that we take to be a mental operation, in Spinoza's considered view, has its basis in a material process, and all of our decisions are rooted in our desires. Indeed, with his claim that ”desire is the essence of man,” he articulates the foundations of the very conceptual framework that latter-day therapists, among others, might use to a.n.a.lyze his lifestyle as ”repressed.” The paradox with which modern interpreters must grapple, as it turns out, is the same one that would bedevil Leibniz. How can one who denies the very existence of the mind lead a life of the mind? Or, as the contemporary magazine reader might ask, can a materialist be spiritual?

PERHAPS THE MOST complex and fraught aspect of the ”rules for living” that Spinoza adopted as a young excommunicant was that which concerned his dealings with other people-with society in general and, above all, with those friends he took to be his fellow philosophers. complex and fraught aspect of the ”rules for living” that Spinoza adopted as a young excommunicant was that which concerned his dealings with other people-with society in general and, above all, with those friends he took to be his fellow philosophers.

At first glance, Spinoza appears to be a philosopher in the mold of Herac.l.i.tus, the ancient sage who retreated to a mountaintop so that he could escape the contaminating presence of his fellow human beings. Lucas says Spinoza moved to Rijnsburg for ”love of solitude,” and that when two years later he decamped to Voorburg, he ”buried himself still deeper in solitude.” Jarig Jelles, in the preface to the philosopher's posthumous works, recounts that ”once he did not go outside his lodgings during three whole months.” Even when stepping out, adds Lucas, the philosopher ”never quitted his solitude except to return to it soon afterwards.” A visiting counselor to the Duke of Holstein named Greiffencrantz (who, no surprise, was also a correspondent of Leibniz) reported that Spinoza ”seemed to live all to himself, always lonely, as if buried in his study.”

But a closer look at Spinoza's life reveals a different side of his social character, something much more akin to the gregarious and humane disposition of Epicurus, the ancient guru who cultivated a tranquil garden for the specific purpose of entertaining his fellow philosophers. Spinoza retreated to Rijnsburg not because he had no friends, but, as Lucas points out, because he had too many. And, even in the safety of his cottage, writes the biographer, ”his most intimate friends went to see him from time to time and only left him again with great reluctance.” Likewise, although Spinoza reportedly moved to Voorburg to escape his friends again, those friends ”did not take long to find him again and to overwhelm him with their visits.” Colerus, too, says that Spinoza had ”a great many friends...some in the military, others of high position and eminence.” In The Hague, it was said that the philosopher received attentions even from ”filles de qualite, who prided themselves on having a superior mind for their s.e.x.” It is also not the case that Spinoza's friends were always the ones making the effort; in several of the extant letters, the philosopher mentions trips planned or made to Amsterdam, where presumably he sought the company of his friends.

Nor was Spinoza lacking in social skills. Colerus says that many persons of distinction ”took a great delight in hearing him discourse.” The most endearing portrait, not surprisingly, comes from his admirer Lucas: His conversations had such an air of geniality and his comparisons were so just that he made everybody fall in unconsciously with his views. He was persuasive although he did not affect polished or elegant diction. He made himself so intelligible, and his discourse was so full of good sense, that none listened to him without deriving satisfaction.... He had a great penetrating mind and a complacent disposition. He knew so well how to season his wit that the most gentle and the most severe found very peculiar charms in it.

The apparent tension between the Herac.l.i.tean and Epicurean sides of Spinoza's character is one that has trailed philosophers since ancient times. On the one hand, philosophy by its nature seems to be an essentially solitary activity. It is the individual's lonely voyage of discovery through the eternal truths of the cosmos-a journey that would seem to place the seeker at ever greater removes of knowledge and abstraction from the rest of humankind. On the other hand, in practice, philosophy is a very social activity. It involves dialogues, debates, compet.i.tion for recognition, and the dissemination of wisdom to the ever needy human race.

Spinoza's own writings embody something of this ancient paradox about philosophy. On the one hand, his works read like the monologue of a solitary traveler into the heart of things. He disdains references as pointless; philosophy, he implies, does not concern itself with the error of others. On the other hand, his works are soaked in higher learning. Provided one knows where to look, one can find in them a raucous conversation with a whole society of earlier thinkers, from the ancient Stoics to Maimonides and Descartes.

In his dealings with living people, too, Spinoza practiced a similarly ambivalent sociability. He distinguished firmly between ordinary humankind and the ”fellows.h.i.+p of reason.” With the mult.i.tudes, he proposed, one should be Herac.l.i.tean. One must keep them at a respectful distance, as one might an unruly herd of buffalo. Specifically, one should not to seek to share with them philosophical views that they will not understand and may only cause them harm. ”The free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid receiving favors from them,” he counsels. When he disdains the pursuit of honor as a form of slavery to ”the opinions of other men,” as he does in his earliest Treatise Treatise, the ”other men” Spinoza has in mind are ordinary, ignorant members of the species at large.

In the presence of fellow philosophers, on the other hand, one may allow oneself to be positively Epicurean. One should join with such individuals in order to form a common front in the search for truth and virtue, for ”there is nothing in nature more useful to man than a man who lives by the guidance of reason.” He adds: ”Man is a G.o.d to Man”-on the a.s.sumption, of course, that the other Man in question is a philosopher, too. One should embrace one's fellow thinkers, then, as one might a fellow G.o.d. Among men of reason, ”honor” is as n.o.ble as its name. In the Ethics Ethics, in curious juxtaposition with the att.i.tude expressed in the earlier Treatise Treatise, he defines ”honor” as ”the desire to establish friends.h.i.+p with others, a desire that characterizes the man who lives by the guidance of reason” and he defines ”honorable” as that which ”is praised by men who live by the guidance of reason.”

Spinoza's policy with respect to the ma.s.ses, at least, seemed to work. Even the relentlessly hostile Pierre Bayle, famous for his encyclopedic Dictionnaire historique et critique Dictionnaire historique et critique, reports that the villagers where Spinoza lived invariably considered him ”a man good to a.s.sociate with, affable, honest, polite, and very proper in his morals.” The philosopher's relations with his landlord in The Hague, Hendrik van der Spyck, and the man's family, provide the most touching example of his success in mixing with the great unwashed. When he needed to take a break from his philosophical labors, it seems, the apostate Jew would descend to the parlor and chat with his house companions about current affairs and other trivia. The conversations often revolved around the local minister's most recent sermon. On occasion the notorious iconoclast even attended church service in order to better partic.i.p.ate in the discussions.

Once, Ida Margarete, Hendrik's wife, asked Spinoza whether he thought that her religion served no purpose. ”Your religion is all right,” he replied. ”You needn't look for another one in order to be saved, if you give yourself to a quiet and pious life.”

Spinoza's quest for honor among his fellow men of reason, not surprisingly, proved far harder to manage within the confines of his stated policy. In fact, his life affords a rich field of study in the complex topic of philosophical communion, and perhaps serves best to demonstrate how difficult it is to extricate even the most rarefied philosophical partners.h.i.+ps from the instinctive, imaginative, and often debilitating bonds of ordinary friends.h.i.+p.

Perhaps the closest Spinoza came to his ideal of philosophical community was with his early merchant friends, who formed a loose band of radical seekers united in their disdain for orthodox religion as well as in their esteem for their master's works. A taste of life as an early Spinozist comes from this letter from Simon de Vries, the philosopher's great benefactor: As for our group, our procedure is as follows. One member (each has his turn) does the reading, explains how he understands it, and goes on to a complete demonstration, following the sequence and order of your propositions. Then, if it should happen that we cannot satisfy one another, we have deemed it worthwhile to make a note of it and to write to you so that, if possible, it should be made clearer to us and we may, under your guidance, uphold the truth against those who are religious and Christian in a superst.i.tious way, and may stand firm against the onslaught of the whole world.

Evidently, there was an underground sensibility to the movement. One pictures de Vries and company drawing the curtains, lighting the candles, and then poring over the ma.n.u.scripts from their hermit rebel leader, reveling all the while in their vaguely illicit freedoms. Even so, in de Vries's reference to ”those who are...Christian in a superst.i.tious way” one may espy an awkward glimmer of daylight between the master and his followers. Most of Spinoza's sympathizers were members of liberal Protestant sects-of which there was no shortage in number and variety in the Dutch Republic at the time. They often interpreted his views in highly religious terms, making little distinction between ”the guidance of reason” and the ”inner light” of radical Protestantism. Spinoza showed considerable sympathy for some aspects of Christianity, and even suggested that Jesus was perhaps the greatest philosopher who ever lived; but he never called himself a Christian.

The case of Willem van Blijenburgh offers a quite different and highly cautionary example of the consequences of mistaken ident.i.ty among alleged men of reason. Blijenburgh, a grain merchant at Dordrecht, first wrote to Spinoza in December 1664 as a stranger, having chanced upon a copy of his book on the philosophy of Descartes. In his first letter, the grain merchant politely asks the philosopher to comment on the matter of whether G.o.d is the cause of evil in the world. From what he had gathered of Spinoza's philosophy, he says, he had stumbled upon an obscurity in his thought: ”Either Adam's forbidden act, insofar as G.o.d not only moved his will but also insofar as he moved it in a particular way, is not evil in itself, or else G.o.d himself seems to bring about what we call evil.”

Spinoza's reply is courteous and informative, clearly inviting future correspondence: ”I gather...that you are deeply devoted to truth, which you make the sole aim of all your endeavors. Since I have exactly the same objective, this has determined me not only to grant without stint your request...but also to do everything in power conducive to further acquaintance and sincere friends.h.i.+p.” It seems that Spinoza a.s.sumed that one who claimed to have read his book on Descartes and who then approached him with a philosophical question was, by definition, a fellow man of reason.

The philosopher should perhaps not be faulted for being unaware that Blijenburgh had already published a short book whose long t.i.tle begins: The Knowledge of G.o.d and His Wors.h.i.+p Affirmed Against the Outrages of the Atheists The Knowledge of G.o.d and His Wors.h.i.+p Affirmed Against the Outrages of the Atheists. But one is ent.i.tled to wonder how he could not have perceived that Blijenburgh's question about evil-phrased with copious references to Adam and his apple-was motivated by some highly orthodox theological concerns.

In his next letter, in any case, the man from Dordrecht puts forward what in Spinoza's mind could only count as a whopper. In the midst of an otherwise interesting discussion of the problem of evil, Blijenburgh a.s.serts that Spinoza's views cannot be entirely correct because they contradict the Bible.

Spinoza now understands that his grain merchant is not in fact a man of reason. In his reply he bluntly suggests that they part ways: ”I hardly believe that our correspondence can be for our mutual instruction. For I see that no proof, however, firmly established according to the rules of logic, has any validity with you unless it agrees with the...Holy Scripture.” The black-and-white character of Spinoza's first two letters to Blijenburgh-in the first, his correspondent is ”deeply devoted to truth,” while in the second he is essentially a waste of time-ill.u.s.trates how firm in Spinoza's mind was the dichotomy between ”men of reason” and the rest of humanity. In this case, though, Spinoza evidently could not resist getting in the last word with his putatively unreasonable interlocutor. After indicating that there is no point to further correspondence, he goes on for several pages clarifying his views and defending them from Blijenburgh's criticisms.

But Blijenburgh was like a wart, more easily acquired than removed. In his next letter, he complains that Spinoza's missive is ”besprinkled with sharp reproofs” and proposes that the two meet when business takes him next in the vicinity of Voorburg. Spinoza responds politely to the proposal, although he perhaps hints at some impatience when he insists that any meeting would have to take place soon, before he travels to Amsterdam.

From Blijenburgh's subsequent letter, it is evident that the dreaded meeting took place, for the grain merchant regrets that ”when I had the honor of visiting you, time did not allow me to stay longer with you.” He then poses a series of questions whose answers, as Spinoza could see, would have required him to divulge the entire contents of his unpublished Ethics Ethics.

At this point, Spinoza decided that enough was enough. Presumably, the meeting only confirmed what the philosopher had suspected, that the grain merchant was emphatically not a member of the fellows.h.i.+p of reason. Spinoza let the matter languish for two months, then grudgingly penned the philosophical equivalent of a Dear John letter: ”I hope that when you have thought the matter over you will willingly desist from your request,” he signs off. There the correspondence ends.

But Blijenburgh just would not go away. Nine years later, following the publication of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the man from Dordrecht published a five-hundred-page wrath-filled tract, the short version of whose t.i.tle reads: The Truth of the Christian Religion and the Authority of the Holy Scripture Affirmed Against the Arguments of the Impious, or a Refutation of the Blasphemous Book t.i.tled ”Tractatus Theologico-Politicus The Truth of the Christian Religion and the Authority of the Holy Scripture Affirmed Against the Arguments of the Impious, or a Refutation of the Blasphemous Book t.i.tled ”Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.” In that screed, Blijenburgh finds several hundred ways to express his singular conviction that his former host's work is ”a book full of studious abominations and an acc.u.mulation of opinions which have been forged in h.e.l.l.”

Nine years and five hundred pages are big numbers in the context of a philosophical grudge. Yet such was the nature of the response Spinoza evoked among his contemporaries in more than just this instance. There was something about the way he interacted with those he deemed his philosophical inferiors-a look of contemptuous indifference? a sneer?-that they could not erase from memory; something that affected Rabbi Morteira and the philosopher's young friends from the synagogue; and something that might prove relevant in considering the effect that Spinoza would have on Leibniz.

The most poignant of Spinoza's unexpectedly troublesome encounters with men of reason involved the man who supplied the first link in the chain of events that ultimately led to his encounter with Leibniz. Henry Oldenburg, twelve years Spinoza's senior, was a native of Bremen, Germany. After he became the secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1661, he corresponded with almost every major scientist and thinker in Europe at the time. When he eventually began publis.h.i.+ng his far-flung correspondence under the t.i.tle of Philosophical Transactions Philosophical Transactions, he effectively invented the modern scientific journal. He was a great communicator and liberal spirit, at least in his younger years, and thirsty for scientific knowledge. No one regarded him as an original thinker in his own right, however, and he was quite conventional in his religious views.

In 1661, on his way to take up his new post in London, Oldenburg pa.s.sed through the university town of Leiden. Sources there told him of the philosophical prodigy living in nearby Rijnsburg. The twenty-eight-year-old Spinoza, incidentally, had published nothing at the time; Oldenburg's decision to travel the extra six miles to visit him testifies to the youthful philosopher's powerful charisma-and perhaps serves to remind us how different the world was then.

On a summer day, the two men met in the dappled sunlight of the tranquil garden outside Spinoza's cottage. For several hours they conversed ”about G.o.d, about infinite Extension and Thought, and about the union of soul and body.” The humble sage of Rijnsburg mesmerized the expatriate German scholar. In the first of his many letters to Spinoza, Oldenburg writes: With such reluctance did I recently tear myself away from your side when visiting you at your retreat in Rijnsburg, that no sooner am I back in England than I am endeavoring to join you again. Substantial learning, combined with humanity and courtesy-all of which nature and diligence have so amply bestowed upon you-hold such an allurement as to gain the affection of any men of quality and of liberal education.