Short Treatise on God/Life of Spinoza/3

by Baruch Spinoza

§ 3. THE EDUCATION OF SPINOZA

The general features of Spinoza's early education it is not difficult to delineate. The Amsterdam Jewish community had their own boys school, which was founded about 1638, and which all Jewish boys would attend as a matter of course. The general curriculum of this school is known from contemporary accounts. We also know the names and characters of some of its most important teachers in the time of Spinoza. There were seven classes in the school. In the lowest class little boys were taught to read their prayers in Hebrew. In the second class they learned to read and chant the Pentateuch in Hebrew. In the next class they were taught to translate parts of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Spanish (which for a long time continued to be the mother-tongue of many Amsterdam Jews, notwithstanding the worse than step motherly treatment which had been meted out to them and their fathers in Spain). Here also they commenced to study Rashi's Hebrew Commentary on the Pentateuch—a commentary written in the eleventh century, but sober far beyond its age. The boys in the fourth class studied the Prophets and the Hagiographa. In the remaining higher classes they studied Hebrew Grammar, portions of the Talmud and of the later Hebrew Codes, the works of Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, and others, according to the discretion of the Rabbi who instructed and advised them. The school hours were from 8 till 11 A.M. and from 2 till 5 P.M. (or earlier during the winter months). We are explicitly informed that during the hours that the boys were at home they would receive private tuition in secular subjects, even in verse-making. The school also possessed a good lending library.

Of the teachers under whose influence Spinoza must have come during his school-days, the most important undoubtedly were Rabbi Saul Morteira and Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel. Saul Morteira was the senior Rabbi of Amsterdam. Born in Venice about 1596 he studied medicine under Montalto, the Marano Court physician of Maria de Medici. Montalto died suddenly while accompanying Louis XIII. to Tours, in 1616, and it was the desire to bury Montalto in a Jewish cemetery that brought Saul Morteira to Amsterdam, where the Jews had only recently (1614) acquired a cemetery in Ouwerkerk (also called Ouderkerk), not very far from the city. While in Amsterdam, Morteira accepted a call to the Rabbinate of the older of the two Synagogues there (the House of Jacob). A third Synagogue came into existence two years later, but in 1638 the three Synagogues were amalgamated, and Morteira acted as the senior or presiding Rabbi till his death, in 1660. Morteira had had a taste of Court life, and was not altogether wanting in philosophical appreciation ; but he was essentially medieval, strait-laced, prosy, and uninspiring. It is related that when Spinoza was but fifteen years old Morteira marvelled at the boy's acumen. By an irony of fate he also presided over the court of Rabbis who issued the ban against Spinoza in 1656.

In Manasseh ben Israel we have a different type of character altogether. He was born in 1604, and had a tragic infancy. His father, Joseph ben Israel, was one of a hundred and fifty Jews whom the Inquisition in Lisbon was about to consign to the flames, in 1605, when Mammon was successfully enlisted against the priests of Moloch. A million gold florins, eight hundred thousand ducats, and five hundred thousand crusados were paid to King Philip III., a hundred thousand crusados to the saintly ecclesiastics, and they became reconciled to spare their victims the flames of hell on earth even if it should entail their loss of heaven hereafter. At the auto-da-fé in January 1605 the unhappy Jews were paraded in penitential garb and made a formal confession of their secret and most sinful loyalty to the religion of Jesus and of the Prophets. The King graciously obtained papal absolution for their heinous crime, and they were dismissed—alive, it is true, but wrecked in health by torture, and robbed of their possessions by Catholic king and holy priests. Joseph ben Israel naturally fled, at the very first opportunity, with his wife and their infant son Manasseh. They went to Amsterdam, where Manasseh lived nearly all his life. He succeeded his teacher, Rabbi Uzziel, as Rabbi of the second Amsterdam Synagogue (the Habitation of Peace) in 1622, when he was barely eighteen years old; started a Hebrew printing-house about the year 1627; and in 1640 he was about to emigrate to Brazil when he received an important appointment in the senior department of the Amsterdam Jewish School, where Spinoza must have come under his influence. Manasseh was not a great thinker, but he was a great reader, and made up in breadth of outlook for what he lacked in depth of insight. Like so many contemporary theologians he was inclined towards mysticism, it is true, but there was a touch of romance in his character, and, urged by an irresistible yearning to help his suffering brethren, his very mysticism with all its puerilities played a useful part: it prompted him to schemes which may indeed appear quixotic, which certainly brought his life to an untimely end, but which bore fruit nevertheless, and were well adapted to bear fruit in an age in which religion and superstition, the flame and the smoke, were so curiously intermingled. What he conceived to be the mission of his life is indicated in the Biblical verse with which he headed the dedication of his Hope of Israel (1650). The book, it is interesting to observe, was dedicated to Spinoza's father and the other Wardens of the Jewish school. At the head of the dedication is the first verse from Isaiah xli.: To preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted. In 1655 Manasseh came to England on a special mission to Oliver Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews into England. Two years later he returned to the Netherlands, carrying with him the corpse of his eldest son. His great schemes seemed shattered. Poor, prematurely aged, and full of sorrows he died, at Middelburg, in 1657.

Manasseh ben Israel was a prolific writer, and his books show undeniable evidence of very wide reading and extra ordinary industry. He cites not only Jewish writers like Ibn Gabriol and Maimonides, but also Euripides and Virgil, Plato and Aristotle, Duns Scotus and Albertus Magnus. Poets and legalists, mystics and rationalists—he had an appreciation for all, if not always a very intelligent appreciation. And he rather prided himself on his secular knowledge, and felt flattered when he was described, not simply as a "theologian," but also as a "philosopher" and "Doctor of Physics." On a portrait engraved in 1642 he is described as "Theologicus et Philosophus Hebraeus."^[1] Moreover he had numerous Christian acquaintances and friends, and corresponded with learned men and women in all parts of Europe—even with Queen Christina of Sweden, and Hugo Grotius, the famous statesman, jurist and historian. In various letters to Vossius, Grotius expressed his great and sincere esteem of Manasseh. Gerhard Vossius, "the greatest polyhistor of the Netherlands," was on intimate terms with Manasseh, and visited him often. Nor was Manasseh at all intolerant. He was very friendly with Caspar Barlæus, the Amsterdam Professor of Philosophy and Rhetoric, who was rather suspected of being a free-thinker. Barlæus was a noted Latin scholar and poet, and prefixed to one of Manasseh's books (De Creatione) a Latin poem which was scarcely orthodox. We also hear of Manasseh's presence at a merry gathering in the house of Episcopius in honour of Sobierre, a noted French wit. On occasion, Manasseh would also introduce some of his Jewish friends to his Christian acquaintances. In one of his letters to a Professor at Leyden, Vossius mentions that Manasseh had just paid him a visit, and brought with him a Portuguese Jew, whom he desired to recommend for the medical degree. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that Manasseh ben Israel exercised a potent personal influence over Spinoza, who must have studied under him for a number of years. Not that Manasseh was competent to make any direct contribution towards the development of Spinoza's philosophy. But his indirect influence must have been considerable. After all, the greatest service which even the best teacher can render does not consist so much in the actual information which he imparts as in the stimulus which he gives, and the love of truth which he inculcates. And Manasseh, we have seen, was a man of wide culture, of broad sympathy, and really devoted to scholarship. What is more likely than that he should use his influence with Spinoza's father so that Baruch might be taught Latin and other secular subjects? And what is more natural than that Manasseh, who encouraged and helped his young Christian friend, a son of Gerhard Vossius, to study and translate Maimonides, should have been even more eager to urge his Jewish students to study their own Hispano-Jewish literature, of which they were justly so proud?

At the house of his Rabbi, Spinoza would occasionally meet Christians who were interested in Judaism, or in the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. Here also he may have met Rembrandt, who, between 1640 and 1656, lived in the very heart of the Jewish quarter and was probably on friendly terms with "The Amsterdam Rabbi," as Manasseh was called. For Rembrandt etched a portrait of Manasseh in 1636, and illustrated one of his books (the Piedra Gloriosa, published in 1655). Moreover, in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, there is a Rembrandt painting of a Rabbi, aged and worn, and believed to be Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel. If so, we must suppose that Rembrandt, hearing of the return and illness of his old friend of twenty years or more, hastened to him to Middelburg, and, deeply impressed by the tragic change which had come over the once hand some but now prematurely aged and broken-down Rabbi, embodied his impression in that portrait. Perhaps it was the art of Rembrandt which stimulated young Spinoza to try his hand at drawing. For we are told that Spinoza was an amateur draughtsman, and his early biographer, Colerus, actually possessed a number of ink and charcoal sketches which Spinoza had made of his friends, also one of Spinoza himself in the costume of Mas Anjellos^[2] (Thomas Aniellos), who in 1647 led the Neapolitan revolt against Spain, and was murdered soon afterwards. In any case, it is known that Spinoza had a number of Christian acquaintances and friends at a very early stage in his career, and that he helped some of them in the study of the Hebrew Bible, and it is not improbable that he was first introduced to some of them by Manasseh ben Israel, the courteous and easily accessible Rabbi, whom they at first consulted when they took up the study of Hebrew. And it is probably more than a mere accident that Spinoza knew and corresponded with Isaac, the son of Gerhard Vossius, and possessed copies of some of the works of both, as also of Grotius, and even of Delmedigo, all of them friends of Manasseh, whose own book, The Hope of Israel, Spinoza also possessed.

Last, though by no means least, there was the moral earnestness of Manasseh. He was an earnest disciple of an earnest master. His teacher and predecessor in office, Rabbi Uzziel, was known for his moral courage. It was his outspoken condemnation of the moral laxity of a portion of Amsterdam Jewry that led to a schism in the young community, and the formation of a third congregation in 1618. For reasons already explained, some of the members of the community had been Roman Catholics for several generations, and had grown dangerously accustomed to the habit of obtaining priestly absolution for moral delin quencies. Rabbi Uzziel would have none of it. Like the prophets of old he would make no truce with immorality, and denounced it without respect of person. Manasseh ben Israel also had the reputation of being an earnest and eloquent preacher, and probably passed on some of his master s moral earnestness to his pupil Spinoza. No doubt young Spinoza could and did draw from the wells of the living waters ; no doubt he could and did draw moral inspiration from the prophetic books themselves. Still, a living example of their moral tone could not fail to intensify his susceptibility to that spirit of the prophets which Spinoza s own writings still breathe.^[3]

The school curriculum, though fairly encyclopædic in range of subjects, was all in Hebrew. Other languages and the more modern sciences, or the more modern treatmentof them, had to be studied outside the school. Spanish and Portu guese he learned from his parents ; Dutch, from his envi ronment. Morteira, who was a Venetian by birth, may have taught him some Italian ; and Manasseh ben Israel, some French. Latin, we are informed, he learned from a German scholar, possibly a certain Jeremiah Felbinger, a man of rather unorthodox reputation, who may also have taught him German. The study of Latin was not popular among the Jews at that time. It was too intimately associated with Roman Catholicism and the Inquisition. In fact it was usual among the Jews to speak of Latin as "the priests' language." Hence the knowledge of Latin was not a common accomplishment of Jews then. A certain Mochinger, writing to Manasseh ben Israel in 1632, complained that in Bohemia and Germany he had not come across any Jew who had learnt even the rudiments of Latin ; and he goes on to en courage Manasseh to persevere with his Latin and to teach it also to others. Even in Amsterdam, where, as the same writer states, there were a number of Jews who knew Latin well, it was regarded with misgiving as the medium of a worldly wisdom, which, like the "Greek wisdom" of old, was suspected, not without reason, of leading to an estrangement from Judaism. And Spinoza's schoolfellow, Moses Zacuto, to whom reference has already been made above, and who began as a poet and ended as a mystic, actually fasted for forty days by way of penance for his early devotion to Latin. If, therefore, Spinoza studied Latin, it may be taken for granted that he also pursued other secular studies, especially mathematics (which he is reported to have studied under an Italian), and physics, both of which he soon required for optical work, and which may actually have disposed him to learn the art of polishing lenses ; probably also the later scholastic philosophy as expounded about that time, in the works of Burgersdijck, Professor of Philosophy at Leyden (died 1632), and by his successor, Heereboord (died 1659). In 1652 Francis van den Enden, an ex-Jesuit, ex-diplomat, ex-bookseller, doctor, and classicist, opened a school in Amsterdam, and Spinoza went there to complete his secular studies. Van den Enden was certainly unorthodox, and was strongly suspected of atheism. Colerus relates that some of the past students of Van den Enden "blessed every day the memory of their parents, who took care in due time to remove them from the school of so pernicious and impious a master." But he was admittedly an able teacher, and Spinoza, no doubt, owed to him his mastery of Latin, also 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.

1. Over this portrait, it is interesting to note, are also the words Peregrinando Quærimus, which formed the motto or trade-mark of Manasseh's press; in the top left corner there is a small shield with a picture of a pilgrim carrying a staff and lamp, while in the right corner are the Hebrew words for Thy word is a lamp unto my feet (Psalm cxix. 105).
2. "A fishrman in his shirt with a net over his right shoulder"(Colerus).
3. For fuller information about Manasseh ben Israel, see Kayserling's essay in the Miscellany of Hebrew Literature (second series), and L. Wolf's Manasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell.