to possess Olympia; he found so much to blame in her, and can love find anything to blame in the object of its regard? He rightly disapproved, however, of Olympia's referring so often with indestructible naïveté to the wealth and luxury of her earlier experiences; if a new life had begun for her with his appearance, what was this resurrection of the dead for? Ought not the past to disappear without leaving a trace behind in view of present happiness? Olympia, strange to say, thought to strengthen her partially weakened natural power by her traditional power, but Spinoza's disapproval thereof ought to have served as a proof that he was not perfectly free from the desire for possession, since he certainly desired monopoly of rule. One day Spinoza and Oldenburg were with Olympia.
"Heaven is not favorable to us to-day," said Oldenburg, "for it makes such a tearful face at us that we must renounce all idea of spending a pleasant day at your hospitable Buiten (country house)."
"Heaven, that is a fine invention!" retorted Olympia jestingly; "that weather prophet (pointing to a barometer) is the thing now. Heaven can no longer do as it likes, Torricelli has shown himself its master. Is it not perfect despair to think that we have now neither Heaven nor Hell? Copernicus and Galileo, more fortunate than the Titans, have
