< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

attaching yourself to piety, you lead at the same time a peaceful and tranquil life."

His temperance and good management were admirable. His daily wants were provided for by a handicraft in which he became very skillful—the polishing of lenses. The Van der Spycks made over to Colerus scraps of paper on which Spinoza had noted down his expenses; these averaged about fourpence halfpenny a day. He was very careful to settle his accounts every quarter, so as neither to spend more nor less than his income. He dressed simply if not poorly, but his aspect radiated serenity. It was evident that he had found out a doctrine which gave him perfect content.

He was never elated, and never depressed; the equability of his moods seems wonderful. Perhaps, indeed, he may have felt some sadness when the daughter of his professor, Van den Ende, preferred Kerkering to him; but I suspect that he soon consoled himself. "Reason is my enjoyment," he would say, "and the aim I have in this life is joy and serenity." He objected to any praise of sadness.

"It is superstition," he maintained, "that sets up sadness as good, and all that tends to joy as evil. God would show himself envious if he took pleasure in my impotence and in the ills I suffer. Rather in proportion to the greatness of our joy do we attain to a greater perfection and participate more fully in the divine nature. . . . Joy, therefore, can never be evil so long as it be regulated by the law of our true utility. A virtuous life is not a sad and sombre one, a life of privations and austerity. How should the Divinity take pleasure in the spectacle of my weakness, or impute to me, as meritorious, tears, sobs, terrors—signs all of an impotent soul? Yes," he added, emphatically, "it is the part of a wise man to use the things of this life, and enjoy them as much as possible; to recruit himself by a temperate and appetizing diet; to charm his senses with the perfume and the brilliant verdure of plants; to adorn his very attire; to enjoy music, games, spectacles, and every diversion that any one can bestow on himself without detriment to character. . . . "We are incessantly spoken to of repentance, humility, death; but repentance is not a virtue, but the consequence of a weakness. Nor is humility one, since it springs in man from the idea of his inferiority. As to the thought of death, it is the daughter of fear, and it is in feeble souls that it sets up its home. . . . The things of all others," he would say, "about which a free man thinks least is death. Wisdom lies in the contemplation not of death, but of life."
V.

Since the days of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, no life had been witnessed so profoundly penetrated by the sentiment of the Divine. In the twelfth, thirteenth, sixteenth century, rationalistic philosophy had numbered very great men in its ranks, but it had had no saints. Occasionally a very repulsive and hard element had entered into the finest characters among Italian freethinkers. Religion had been utterly absent from those lives not less in revolt against human than divine laws, of which the last example was that of poor Vanini. Here, on the contrary, we have religion producing free thought as a part of

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