Baruch Spinoza was by nature unfitted for matrimony. An aggressive thinker, he led a troubled life. Of Portuguese Hebrew parentage, he was accused of heresy at an early age and narrowly escaped assassination. Quitting Amsterdam he took up his abode at The Hague, where he remained until he died. Having no private fortune he earned his living by polishing spectacles. His needs were few, and he refused with equal equanimity a sum of two thousand florins, which his friend, Simon de Vries, presented to him, and the offer of the chair of philosophy in the University of Heidelberg.
Fame was not his object, and of all his writings a theologico-political treatise was the only one published during his life. A storm of disapproval greeted it, and the author decided not to provoke the public any further. He did not cease to labor, however, and after his death his friends found that a mass of manuscripts were ready for the press.
RENÉ DESCARTES (France—1596-1650).
Another thinker, over whose life no woman seems to have exercised any influence, is René Descartes. He took part in the siege of La Rochelle in 1629 and then sought solitude in Holland and remained there for twenty years. During this time he published his metaphysical works and made a great name for himself. The Princess Palatine became his warm friend, and Christine of Sweden invited him to her court. He declined her invitation at first, but finally, finding that his theological opponents were determined to suppress him, he fled from Holland and took refuge in Stockholm, where the rigorous climate soon carried him off. Christine, whose counselor and warm friend, in a Platonic sense, he had been for years, mourned sincerely for him. So did other notable women who dimly recognized in him the Socrates of the seventeenth century.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON (England—1642-1727).
Very similar was the fate of the great Sir Isaac Newton. Born in 1642, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1660, and thenceforward gave himself up to the study of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Making his home at Woolsthorpe, where he possessed a fine property, he spent his remaining years there, taking occasional trips to London and Cambridge. In 1672 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1688 he represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society, and held the position until his death in 1727.
Why he never married is not clear. It is supposed, however, that he was crossed in love in his youth and on that account abandoned all thoughts of matrimony.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (Sweden—1688-1772).
A mystic from his cradle, Swedenborg blossomed first as a man of letters and a poet and won considerable popularity in Stockholm and throughout Sweden. Then he became a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and broached his famous atomic theory. Finally, at the age of fifty-four, he cast off all mortal interests and became the expounder of new religious doctrines, claiming that the truths he gave out were secured through direct inspiration.
His disciples founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, which spread rapidly, and to-day has offshoots in England, India, Africa, and this country.