SPINOZA'S PERSONALITY.--The figure of Spinoza stands as one of the most imposing and attractive in the whole history of philosophy, and his was an unworldliness, a simplicity, and a humility purely Franciscan. Like all Jews then, he knew a trade--that of lens grinding--and by this he was able to live frugally, while he elaborated his thought. He dedicated his life to the labour of quiet contemplation; nor was he ambitious of recognition, which indeed generally came to him in the form of abuse. He did not escape "the exquisite rancour of theological hatred," but it was his belief, and the conviction inspired his life, that-- "Neither riches, nor sensuous enjoyment, nor honours, can be a true good for man"; but on the contrary, "that the only thing which is able to fill the mind with ever-new satisfaction is the striving after knowledge, by means of which the mind is united with that which remains constant while all else changes." "The God-intoxicated," was the name given to Spinoza long afterwards in Germany. He died (like St. Francis) at forty-five, worn out with the toil of thought. And it renews one's faith in the perspicacity of commonplace people to learn that his barber, sending in a bill after the death of the philosopher, alluded to his late customer as "Mr. Spinoza of blessed memory." It was left to a contemporary theologian to describe him as "an unclean and foul atheist." LEIBNIZ.--Spinoza had taken over from Descartes and Hobbes their mechanical and determinist conception of nature, though he gave to it, as we have seen, an interpretation of his own. His attitude was a blend of that rationalism and mysticism which were characteristic of so much seventeenth century thought. A far more complete reaction, however, displays itself in the system of a contemporary of Spinoza's--Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716); who, when already a youth, had become an enthusiastic devotee of the new science; the study of Kepler, Galileo and Descartes caused him to feel as though "transported into a different world." Though a German by birth, Leibniz lived continuously in France, and wrote habitually in the language of that country. CONTRAST TO SPINOZA.--Spinoza and Leibniz stand as examples of two distinct methods of eluding the despotism of mechanics--methods which will meet us again in the course of our survey. Spinoza accepts the mechanical view as being inevitable and even desirable, but subjects it to a spiritual interpretation--he regards it as the way in which the _Natura naturans_ works.[9] Leibniz, on the other hand, viewed existence from an entirely different standpoint. He was bold enough to reject the mechanical view altogether; or rather he preferred to regard it as a convenient abstraction, or a useful formula, which might reflect certain aspects of reality, but could not do justice to its concrete richness and complexity.