lenses; he refused a professorship, preferring, like Maimonides before him, to rely on other than literary pursuits as a means of livelihood.
In 1670 Spinoza finished his “Theologico-Political Tractate.” in which some bitterness against the Synagogue is apparent. His attack on the Bible is crude, but the fundamental principles of modern criticism are here anticipated. The main importance of the “Tractate” lay in the doctrine that the state has full rights over the individual, except in relation to freedom of thought and free expression of thought. These are rights which no human being can alienate to the state. Of Spinoza’s greatest work, the “Ethics,” it need only be said that it was one of the most stimulating works of modern times. A child of Judaism and of Cartesianism. Spinoza won a front place among the great teachers of mankind.
