opinions disposes us to exaggerate his
merit) he was one of the very best men whom these
modern times have seen. Excommunicated, disinherited,
and thrown upon the world when a mere boy
to seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducements
which on all sides were urged upon him to come forward
in the world; refusing pensions, legacies, money
in many forms, he maintained himself with grinding
glasses for optical instruments, an art which he had
been taught in early life, and in which he excelled the
best workmen in Holland; and when he died, which
was at the early age of forty-four, the affection with
which he was regarded showed itself singularly in the
endorsement of a tradesman's bill which was sent in to
his executors, in which he was described as M. Spinoza
of "blessed memory."

The account which remains of him we owe not to
an admiring disciple, but to a clergyman, to whom his
theories were detestable; and his biographer allows that
the most malignant scrutiny had failed to detect a
blemish in his character,--that except so far as his opinions
were blameable, he had lived to all outward appearances free
from fault. We desire, in what we are going to say of him,
to avoid offensive collision with even popular prejudices,
and still more with the earnest convictions
of serious persons: our business is to relate
what he was, and leave others to form their own conclusions.
But one lesson there does seem to lie in such
a life of such a man,--a lesson deeper than any which is
to be found in his philosophy,--that wherever there is
genuine and thorough love for good and goodness, no
speculative superstructure of opinion can be so extravagant
as to forfeit those graces which are promised
not to clearness of intellect, but to purity of heart. In
Spinoza's own beautiful language,--"justitia et caritas
unicum et certissimum verae fidei Catholicae signurn est,
et veri Spiritus sancti fructus: et ubicumque haec reperiuntur,
ibi Christus re verg est, et ubicumque haec
desunt deest Christus. Solo namque Christi Spiritu duci
possumus in amorem justitiae et caritatis." We may
deny his conclusions; we may consider his system of
thought preposterous and even pernicious, but we
cannot refuse him the respect which is the right of
all sincere and honourable men. We will say, indeed,
as much as this, that wherever and on whatever
questions good men are found ranged on opposite sides,
one of three alternatives is always true:--either