have been his association with university life, where all in-
struction was in Latin, that first moved Spinoza to use the
Latinized version of his first name, Benedictus.
It is to the final years of his Amsterdam period that Spi-
noza’s earliest philosophical writings belong. According to
Nadler, following Mignini, there are good reasons for think-
ing that the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Trac-
tatus de intellectus emendatione), an unfinished work on
philosophical method and language, is the first of Spinoza’s
extant philosophical treatises (Nadler, 1999, pp. 175–176).
Its content and terminology suggest a dating before the Short
Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being (Korte Verhandeling
van God de mensch en des zelfs welstand), which he probably
began sometime in late 1660 or early 1661.
To devote himself more fully to his philosophical inves-
tigations, Spinoza decided in the summer of 1661 to settle
in the small village of Rijnsburg, a few miles outside of Lei-
den. This sleepy village had been the center of Collegiant ac-
tivity in Holland, and Spinoza may have been directed there
by his Collegiant friends, though its proximity to Leiden,
with its university where he probably still had friends from
the time he had studied there, must have added to its attrac-
tion for Spinoza. In the back of the house in which he lodged
was a room where Spinoza set up his lense-grinding equip-
ment, where in addition to lenses he also made telescopes
and microscopes. Problems in optics were an abiding interest
for Spinoza, and Christian Huygens, a scientist of interna-
tional reputation, considered himself, Spinoza, and the
mathematician Johannes Hudde to be the three leading spe-
cialists who were seeking to improve and extend the capabili-
ties of the microscope. Huygens got to know Spinoza person-
ally in the early 1660s and often conferred with him about
scientific matters.
While Spinoza was still in Amsterdam, his friends soon
became aware of the originality of his philosophical approach
and persuaded him to provide them with a concise exposi-
tion of his developing ideas so they could study and discuss
them. Acceding to their request, Spinoza composed a work
in Latin probably sometime between the middle of 1660 and
his departure for Rijnsburg. When his friends asked for a
Dutch version, Spinoza reworked the text, while making
many additions and revisions. Fully conscious of the novelty
and daring of his thought, he urged them “to be very careful
about communicating these things to others” (Nadler, 1999,
p. 186). Spinoza worked on the Short Treatise throughout
1661 and into 1662, transcribing and emending it. This
short work outlines most of the essentials of Spinoza’s ma-
ture system as exhibited in the Ethics. Moreover, Short Trea-
tise, discovered about 1860 and of which two Dutch versions
are available, bears witness to the birth pangs of Spinoza’s
thought, which, with its strong pantheistic coloring, is still
couched in language that is clearly theological. Spinoza hesi-
tated to publish it for fear of the Calvinist theologians who
might be deeply offended by it and, as Spinoza himself puts
it, will “with their usual hatred attack me, who absolutely
dread quarrels” (Ep. 6; Curley, 1985, p. 188; Nadler, 1999,
p. 191).In April 1663 Spinoza moved to Voorburg, near The
Hague, thus gaining the advantage of proximity to a major
city. Before leaving, however, he visited his old friends in
Amsterdam, whereupon Jarig Jelles and Lodewigk Meyer
prevailed upon him to expand his Euclidean exposition of
Descartes’s Principia philosophiae and allow its publication
together with his Cogitata metaphysica (Metaphysical
thoughts). This was the only book of Spinoza’s to appear in
his lifetime under his own name. In 1670, after Spinoza’s
move to The Hague, his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was
published anonymously under a false imprint in Amsterdam.
A few months thereafter, the Reformed Church Council of
Amsterdam pronounced its condemnation of the book, and
a series of lesser councils and consistories swiftly followed the
example. In July 1674 the Court of Holland condemned the
Tractatus and prohibited its printing, distribution, and sale.
Although the great Dutch statesman Johan De Witt seems
to have preferred not to proceed to a formal provincial ban
of the Tractatus, it is a mistake, according to Jonathan Israel,
to deduce from this that he viewed it in any way favorably
(Israel, 2001, pp. 277–278). A surviving fragment from a
diary of the classicist Jacob Gronovius reveals that in the
Dutch governing circles Spinoza was then deemed the most
dangerous of the Dutch atheists and considered by De Witt
a miscreant deserving imprisonment. Given the vehemence
of the outcry against him, Spinoza became apprehensive
when he learned that a Dutch translation of his Tractatus was
about to be published, and he contacted his faithful friend
Jelles to stop the printing. The need for caution was under-
lined by the trial of Adrian Koerbagh, in which the prosecu-
tor questioned him about his relations with Spinoza and at-
tempted to obtain from him a confession that his book
contained Spinoza’s teachings. Koerbagh was condemned to
ten years in prison but died shortly after, in jail, in October- It was Adrian’s tragic end, observes Nadler, “in Spino-
za’s eyes a sign of collusion between the secular and the sec-
tarian authorities, that gave him the impetus to put the final
touches on his Tractatus and prepare it for publication”
(Nadler, 1999, p. 269).
In 1672 came the French invasion of Holland and the
murder of De Witt, events that cast a dark shadow on Spino-
za’s last years. In February 1673 he received an invitation
from the elector palatine Karl Ludwig to accept a professor-
ship at Heidelberg. Spinoza refused it for fear that it would
interfere with his “further progress in philosophy,” and be-
cause of his misgivings about a statement in the invitation
concerning the prince’s confidence that Spinoza would not
misuse his freedom in philosophical teaching to disturb the
public religion (Nadler, 1999, p. 313).
Late in the summer of 1675, Spinoza completed his
magnum opus, the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Eth-
ics), and went to Amsterdam to arrange for its publication.
There, as he wrote to Henry Oldenburg, “while I was negoti-8682 SPINOZA, BARUCH