He enjoyed social intercourse with people of the ordinary as well as of the clever sort, and indulged his liking by means of correspondence when he could not get talk. In the later years of his life he took up his abode in the Hague, with a family by the name of Van der Spyck, kind, good, uncultivated people, who grew to have the sincerest affection and esteem for their gentle, scholarly lodger. Perhaps it was in return for the interest and pleasure which Spinoza took in the kind woman’s children, that she one day anxiously asked him――for of course they all knew that he was not of the same religion as his hosts――whether his form of belief or theirs was the better. ‘All religions are good,’ he answered, ‘that lead one to a good life; you need not seek further.’ The truth of this axiom was demonstrated in his own life. Spinoza never renounced his religion, but it shines out more perhaps in his life than in his philosophy. Spinoza showed himself a Jew, in despite, as it were, of himself. He was a faithful, patriotic citizen, trustworthy always, and trusted greatly in a time of panic and danger, which the Netherlands experienced in 1672, when the King of France (Louis XIV.) ‘came down to Utrecht like a land flood.’ He never had much longing for fame, and it was characteristic that when, after the publication of his _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg was offered to him, he declined it, fearing that in that responsible position he might feel fettered, and be unable to speak out all the truth that was in him, and thus be less really useful to his fellow-men. =6. Unto this Last.=――He went on, year after year, with the work that lay close to his hand, using his loneliness and his trials not as weapons, but as tools. He continued day by day to write, and to teach, and to make his spectacles, doing each different duty with all his might, and each in as perfect fashion as was possible to him. He was of a cheerful spirit, though never of robust health. And, with no wife or child to whom his health was of supreme importance, he died, almost unexpectedly, of consumption, when he was only forty-five years old (Feb. 27, 1677). =7. His Writings.=――Of these, the most celebrated are the treatise, partly political and partly theological, called _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, which was published in 1670, and the ‘Ethics,’ his great philosophical work, which was not published till after his death. As it would be impossible to convey, to one who had never read his plays, any intellectual idea of Shakespeare by merely saying that he wrote ‘Hamlet,’ so is it hopeless to get at any notion of Spinoza as an author by a bald statement of his works. Spinoza’s writings are strong meat, and need a trained digestion. ‘His mind,’ says Auerbach, ‘has fed the thought of two centuries;’ and this picturesque statement must serve as the only indication that can be here given of the fare so provided.