the book in his possession. The same writer tells us that Spinoza's master, Van den Ende, had a learned, witty, and accomplished daughter, who took part in teaching his pupils, and Spinoza among them. From a learner, the tale says, he became a lover, but was supplanted by a fellow-pupil named Kerkering, who wooed and won the lady, not unassisted by the material persuasion of a valuable pearl necklace. The story passed current until it was rudely called in question by the facts which Dr. van Vloten discovered and published in 1862. True it is that Van den Ende had a daughter, but she was only eleven years old at the latest time when Spinoza can have been her father's pupil. True it is that she married Theodore Kerkering, but not till several years after, in 1671. He was, like her father, a physician, and earned a considerable scientific reputation by his work in medicine, chemistry, and anatomy. The match appears to have been a very natural and proper one, and the rivalry with Spinoza and the pearl necklace must be dismissed as inventions. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the tale of Spinoza's love for Clara van den Ende is wholly without foundation. Van den Ende probably continued to see something of his former pupil until, to his misfortune, he left Holland;[1] and we know that Spinoza was from time to time at Amsterdam. Besides this, nothing forbids us to suppose that even from an earlier date there may have sprung up a half romantic, half childish affection between Spinoza and Klaartje. Beatrice was only nine years old, and Dante himself only ten, when the "glorious lady of his soul" first showed herself to his eyes, and the word came to him, "Ecce dues fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi." So that if any one is minded to cling to this one piece of romance in Spinoza's life, I think he may do so by taking the story with some such qualification as here suggested.[2] I must confess, however, that my own inclination is, on reflection, towards entire unbelief. The story as told by Colerus is not credible, and any credible story we may devise in its stead must be so different from that given by Colerus as to rest in truth on no evidence at all. Besides, the testimony of Colerus is here at its weakest; he does not report this matter, as he does many others, as being within the actual knowledge of himself or his informants, but refers for confirmation to authorities which are all but worthless.[3]
So much we know of Spinoza for the first twenty-three years of his life. We may well believe that he had not long attained man's estate before the freedom of his thought and discourse, and perhaps also laxity in ceremonial observances, began to excite attention among the elders of his people; but, whatever suspicions. may have been conceived, and whatever informal warnings may have been given, no action was taken till 1656. A community which owed its existence to flight from repeated persecutions might be expected by a hasty observer of human nature to practise toleration itself; but experience is far from warranting such an inference. Witness the example of the settlers of New England, whose first use of their freedom from the yoke of episcopacy was to set up a new ecclesiastical tyranny after their own patterns of a kind not less oppressive and infinitely more vexatious. There is too much reason to fear that the Jewish exiles from Spain and
- ↑ Van den Ende migrated to France, where he involved himself in a political conspiracy, hoping that it might turn to the profit of his own country, and was hanged at Paris in 1674.
- ↑ Most recent writers, including Auerbach, to whom it must have given a pang to cast away the foundation of his charming novel, treat the whole story as a fable. Dr. van Vloten himself (Benedictus de Spinoza, 2nd ed., 1871, p. 21), and Dr. H. J. Betz, of the Hague (Levensschets van Baruch de Spinoza, 1876), take a line not unlike what I have given in the text. Dr. Rothschild (Spinoza: zur Rechtfertigung seiner Philosophie u. Zeit, Leipzig, 1877) boldly maintains Colerus's account as historical, and dismisses the objection as to dates with the remark: "Es giebt frühreife Naturen."
- ↑ Kortholt.(De tribus Impostoribus Magnis, No. 82 in Van der Linde, cf. No. 287), and the article on Spinoza in Bayle's Dictionary. Korsholt's "three impostors" are Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Spinoza. The book has nothing to do (beyond the studied similarity of title) with the famous, perhaps mythical, De tribus Impostoribus, which is a standing riddle of bibliography. Of this, however, a spurious French version circulated in MS. in the eighteenth century, under the name of L'Esprit — or, bound up with Lucas's biography, La Vie et l'Esprit — de M. Benoìt de Spinoza. See Van der Linde, Nos. 99—102
