This came as a great blow to the prestige of the Rabbis who apparently had invoked the names of Joshua and Elisha in vain and who saw themselves publicly defied for the second time in less than half a dozen years. In their anxiety they went so far as to make an appeal to the town hall. They asked for an interview with the Burgomasters and explained that this Baruch de Spinoza whom they had just expelled from their own church was really a most dangerous person, an agnostic who refused to believe in God and who therefore ought not to be tolerated in a respectable Christian community like the city of Amsterdam.
Their lordships, after their pleasant habit, washed their hands of the whole affair and referred the matter to a sub-committee of clergymen. The sub-committee studied the question, discovered that Baruch de Spinoza had done nothing that could be construed as an offense against the ordinances of the town, and so reported to their lordships. At the same time they considered it to be good policy for members of the cloth to stand together and therefore they suggested that the Burgomasters ask this young man, who seemed to be so very independent, to leave Amsterdam for a couple of months and not to return until the thing had blown over.
From that moment on the life of Spinoza was as quiet and uneventful as the landscape upon which he looked from his bedroom windows. He left Amsterdam and hired a small house in the village of Rijnsberg near Leiden. He spent his days polishing lenses for optical instruments and at night he smoked his pipe and read or wrote as the spirit moved him. He never married. There was rumor of a love affair between him and a daughter of his former Latin teacher, van den Ende. But as the child was ten years old when Spinoza left Amsterdam, this does not seem very likely.
He had several very loyal friends and at least twice a year they offered to give him a pension that he might devote all his time to his studies. He answered that he appreciated their good intentions but that he preferred to remain independent and with the exception of an allowance of eighty dollars a year from a rich young Cartesian, he never touched a penny and spent his days in the respectable poverty of the true philosopher.
He had a chance to become a professor in Germany, but he declined. He received word that the illustrious King of Prussia would be happy to become his patron and protector, but he answered nay and remained faithful to the quiet routine of his pleasant exile.
After a number of years in Rijnsberg he moved to the Hague. He had never been very strong and the particles of glass from his half-finished lenses had affected his lungs.
He died quite suddenly and alone in the year 1677.
To the intense disgust of the local clergy, not less than six private carriages belonging to prominent members of the court followed the “atheist” to his grave. And when two hundred years later a statue was unveiled to his memory, the police reserves had to be called out to protect the participants in this solemn celebration against the fury of a rowdy crowd of ardent Calvinists.
So much for the man. What about his influence? Was he merely another of those industrious philosophers who fill endless books with endless theories and speak a language which drove even Omar Khayyam to an expression of exasperated annoyance?