3. _In the Public Eye_ (1663–1677). During this period Spinoza lived at or near the Hague, where he had many visitors and a large correspondence.[32] He was an intimate friend of the brothers DeWitte, who made so large a part of the political history of the country. In 1662–1665 he was writing his _Ethics_, his monumental work. In 1663–1670 he wrote and published the _Theological-Political Treatise_, the only work published during his life. Although received with horror, it was widely read. It aimed to show that the _Bible_ is history. In 1673 he declined the call to the University of Heidelberg. Just before his death, in 1677, he wrote the fragment of the _Political Treatise_. =The Method of Spinoza.= The method which Spinoza employed in writing his _Ethics_ must not be regarded by the reader as a fantastic dress that he capriciously chose. It had for Spinoza a real and not merely an external significance. On taking up the book, one finds philosophy treated exactly as Euclid treated his geometry. Beginning with a number of definitions and axioms, there are deduced, step by step, propositions with appended scholia and corollaries. To Spinoza this was not pressing philosophy into an artificial and rigid form, but was only the natural mode of philosophical expression. For, in the first place, if the new method of science had proved itself successful in treating physical phenomena, why should not the same method have the same success with problems of the world of the spirit――and in this way bring the two worlds into harmony? By deduction one could then arrive at absolute certainty and unassailable proof of the solutions of metaphysical problems that had long vexed the Middle Ages. With the perfect geometrical method all problems in heaven and earth could be solved. In the second place, the religious conviction of Spinoza that all things come from God required the deductive method to explain them. The order in which we should study phenomena should correspond to the real order in which they stand to God. God is the ground or reason of things, and all are derived from Him as consequents. The deduction of the relation of finite things to God will correspond to the real relation in which God stands to them.