"Nay, some of the webs were of silk. I see now how much Benedict owes to Baruch. The Rabbinical gymnastic is no ill-training, though unmethodic. Maimonides de-anthropomorphises God, the Cabalah grapples, if confusedly, with the problem of philosophy." "Thou didst not always speak so leniently of thy ancient learning. Methinks thou hast forgotten thy sufferings and the catalogue of curses. I would shut thee up a week with Moses Zacut, and punish you both with each other's society. The room should be four cubits square, so that he should be forced to disobey the Ban and be within four cubits of thee." "Thou forgettest to reckon with the mathematics," laughed Spinoza. "We should fly to opposite ends of the diagonal and achieve five and two third cubits of separation." "Ah, fuzzle me not with thy square roots. I was never a calculator." "But Moses Zacut was not so unbearable. I mind me he also learnt Latin under thee." "Ay, and now spits out to see me. Fasted forty days for his sin in learning the devil's language." "What converted him?" "That Turkish mountebank, I imagine." "Sabbata Zevi?" "Yes; he still clings to him though the Messiah has turned Mohammedan. He has published _Five Evidences of the Faith_, expounding that his Redeemer's design is to bring over the Mohammedans to Judaism. Ha! ha! What a lesson in the genesis of religions! The elders who excommunicated thee have all been bitten--a delicious revenge for thee. Ho! ho! What fools these mortals be, as the English poet says. I long to shake our Christians and cry, 'Nincompoops, Jack-puddings, feather-heads, look in the eyes of these Jews and see your own silly selves.'" "'Tis not the way to help or uplift mankind," said Spinoza mildly. "Men should be imbued with a sense of their strength, not of their weakness." "In other words," laughed the doctor, "the way to uplift men is to appeal to the virtues they do not possess." "Even so," assented Spinoza, unmoved. "The virtues they may come to possess. Men should be taught to look on noble patterns, not on mean." "And what good will that do? Moses Zacut had me and thee to look on," chuckled the old man. "No, Benedict, I believe with Solomon, 'Answer a fool according to his folly,' Thou art too half-hearted--thou deniest God like a serving-man who says his master is out--thou leavest a hope he may be there all the while. One should play bowls with the holy idols." Spinoza perceived it was useless to make the old man understand how little their ideas coincided. "I would rather uplift than overturn," he said mildly. The old sceptic laughed: "A wonder thou art not subscribing to uplift the Third Temple," he cried. "So they call this new synagogue they are building in Amsterdam with such to-do." "Indeed? I had not heard of it. If I could hope it were indeed the Third Temple," and a mystic light shone in his eyes, "I would subscribe all I had."