=4. Things come to a Climax.=――Even in his student days, and by his fellow-students, Spinoza had begun to be looked upon as dangerous, and by the time he was twenty-three, matters came to their regrettable climax. His speculative and independent opinions grew to be a subject for serious discussion among the elders of the synagogue, and, of course, to them he was only a young man, whose genius, even if guessed at, was as yet quite unproved. They were acting, it must be borne in mind, only on their knowledge of him, not on ours, and, from their point of view, for the good of the community. They would have brought back their wandering sheep to the fold, if it could be done; but if not, it was thought well to drive such a one definitely outside of it altogether, and so be rid of the responsibility of him. The Spanish-descended Jews, it must be confessed, were always consistent in their policy of prudent aloofness from any embarrassing contact with brethren either of unsafe morals or of unpleasant manners. In this case they did not want to argue with the young man, nor yet to punish him, if it could be avoided; they wished, with simple selfishness, to be free of a member who was likely to bring them into trouble. An offer was made to Spinoza of an annuity of a thousand florins, if he would, so far as utterance and observance were concerned, conform to the rules and rites of the synagogue. The offer showed singularly little knowledge of Spinoza’s character. It was, without a moment’s hesitation, promptly and peremptorily declined. The elders grew angrier. He was summoned before them, censured, and put ‘without the camp’ for thirty days, and a little later, his firm and calm attitude incensing them yet more, and it also being reported that young men were being misled by him, these comparatively mild measures were followed up by a distinct sentence of excommunication. The text of the excommunication is painful to read. In solemn terms he was cursed with ‘all the curses that are written in the Law,’ both in the mass, and in pretty separate detail, and any and every form of communication with members of his own faith was categorically denied to him. It was a terrible document, and the only shadow of excuse that can be made for it lies in the fact that it was a strong-spoken age, an age that hated heresy, and was much given to the burning of heretics. Curse and anathema were in the air. Readers of history will remember the terms in which Martin Luther spoke and wrote of Erasmus, and how, in dealing with his religious adversaries generally, the brave monk ‘hurled words like rocks and boulders on their heads.’ Martin Luther’s work was more than a century old at the time of Spinoza’s excommunication, but it is curious to trace how the fierce struggles of the Reformation, like the deadly tactics of the Inquisition, made their mark and left their influence on Jewish action. =5. How Spinoza took his Sentence: his Mode of Life.=――