in his own words, trusting thereby to
give the reader an opportunity of knowing who and what Spinoza really
was. One man shrinks with horror from him as an Atheist. Voltaire
says, that he was an Atheist, and taught Atheism. Another calls him "a
God-intoxicated man." We present him a mighty thinker, a master mind,
a noble, fearless utterer of free and noble thoughts, a hard-working,
honest, independent man; as one who, two centuries ago, gave forth to
the world a series of thinkings which have crushed, with resistless
force, the theological shell in the centre of which the priests hide
the kernel "truth."

Spinoza appears in his boyhood to have been an apt scholar, and to have
rapidly mastered the tasks set him by his teachers. Full of rabbinical
lore he won the admiration of the Rabbi Moses Mortira, but the pupil
rose higher than his master, and attempted to solve problems which the
learned rabbis were content to reverence as mysteries not capable
of solution. First they remonstrated, then threatened; still Spinoza
persevered in his studies, and in making known the result to those
around him. He was threatened with excommunication, and withdrew himself
from the synagogue. One more effort was made by the rabbis, who offered
Spinoza a pension of about L100 a-year if he would attend the
synagogue more frequently, and consent to be silent with regard to
his philosophical thinkings. This offer he indignantly refused. Reason
failing, threats proving futile, and gold being treated with scorn,
one was found sufficiently fanatic to try a further experiment, which
resulted in an attempt on Spinoza's life; the knife, however, luckily
missed its aim, and our hero escaped. At last, in the year 1660,
Spinoza, being then twenty-eight years of age, was solemnly
excommunicated from the synagogue. His friends and relations shut their
doors against him. An outcast from the home of his youth, he gained
a humble livelihood by polishing glasses for microscopes, telescopes,
etc., at which he was very expert. While thus acquiring, by his own
handiwork, the means of subsistence, he was studying hard, devoting
every possible hour to philosophical research. Spinoza became master of
the Dutch, Hebrew, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin languages, the
latter of which he acquired in the house of one Francis Van den Ende,
from whom it is more than probable he received as much instruction in
Atheism as in Latin. Spinoza only appears to have once