what little knowledge he had of Greek, the advancement of his medical and physical knowledge, and most probably also his first introduction to the philosophy of Descartes, whose recent death, in 1650, must have attracted renewed attention to his writings. Van den Enden, as we shall see, was also kind to Spinoza in other ways, and certainly deserved some thing better than the tragic fate which befell him.
In March 1654 Spinoza's father died. Spinoza had now to provide for his own maintenance. His "schooling" was finished. A new period commenced for him.
§ 4. SPINOZA'S ALIENATION FROM THE
SYNAGOGUE—1654-1656
Spinoza had an inborn passion for clear and consistent thinking. And the great intellectual gifts with which fortune had unstintingly endowed him were abundantly exercised and sharpened in the prolonged study of the Hebrew legal and religious codes. These abound in subtle problems and subtler solutions. And whatever Spinoza may have subsequently thought of their intrinsic merits, yet their value as a mental discipline was undeniable. But this power of penetration was slowly but inevitably bringing him into antagonism with the very sources from which it had drawn strength. Moreover, even quite apart from this sharpening of his reasoning powers, his Hebrew studies provided him also with ample material and stimulus for the exercise of his critical acumen. The spirit of rationalism pervades the whole literature of the Jews of the Spanish period,[1] and the masterpieces of that literature were the pride of the Jewish refugees from the Peninsula, indeed, of all Jews. In the commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167) he found many bold and suggestive hints. In the Preface,
- ↑ See the writer's Aristotle in Medieval Jewish Thought.
