THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA 121
says, "He was very careful to cast up his accounts every quarter; which
he did that he might spend neither more nor less than what he had to
spend for each year. And he would say sometimes, to the people of the
house, that he was like the serpent who forms a circle with his tail in his
mouth; to denote that he had nothing left at the year's end." 10 But in his
modest way he was happy. To one who advised him to trust in revelation
rather than in reason, he answered : "Though
I were at times to find the
fruit unreal which I gather by my natural understanding, yet this would
not make me otherwise than content; because in the gathering I am
happy, and pass my days not in sighing and sorrow, but in peace, serenity
11 and joy." "If Napoleon had been as intelligent as Spinoza/' says a great
sage, "he would have lived in a 12
garret and written four books."
To the portraits of Spinoza which have come down to us we may add
a word of description from Colerus. "He was of a middle size. He had
good features in his face, the skin somewhat black, the hair dark and
curly, the eyebrows long and black, so that one might easily know by his
looks that he was descended from Portuguese Jews. As for his clothes, he
was very careless of them, and they were not better than those of the
meanest citizen. One of the most eminent councilors of state went to see
him, and found him in a very untidy morning-gown; whereupon the
councillor reproached him for it, and offered him another. Spinoza an-
swered that a man was never the better for having a fine gown, and
added, e
lt is unreasonable to wrap up things of little or no value in a
precious cover.' " 18
Spinoza's sartorial philosophy was not always so
ascetic. "It is not a disorderly or slovenly carriage that makes us sages,"
he writes; "for affected indifference to personal appearance is rather
evidence of a poor spirit in which true wisdom could find no worthy
dwelling-place, and science could only meet with disorder and disarray." 14
9
It was during this five years stay at Rhynsburg that Spinoza wrote the
little fragment "On the Improvement of the Intellect" (De Intellectus
Emendatione) and the Ethics , Geometrically Demonstrated (Ethica More
Geometrico Demonstrata) . The latter was finished in 1665; but for ten
years Spinoza made no effort to publish it. In 1668 Adrian Koerbagh, for
printing opinions similar to Spinoza's, was sent to jail for ten years; and
died there after serving eighteen months of his sentence. When, in 1675,
Spinoza went to Amsterdam trusting that he might now safely publish his
chef-d'oeuvre, "a rumor was spread about," as he writes to his friend
Oldenburg, "that a book of mine was soon to appear, in which I endeavored
to prove that there is no God. This report, I regret to add, was
by many received as true. Certain theologians (who probably were them-
MIn Pollock, Life and Philosophy of Spinoza; London, 1899; p. 393.
^Epistle 34, ed. Willis.
"Anatole France: M. Bergeret in Paris; New York, 1921; p. 180.
"In Pollock, p. 394. "In Willis, p. 7*-