He had such a tremendous flair for choosing the methods that would make his pupils like their classical lessons, that heedless of the man’s popish past, the Calvinistic burghers of Amsterdam willingly entrusted their children to his care and were very proud of the fact that the pupils of his school invariably out-hexametered and out-declined the little boys of all other local academies. Van den Ende taught little Baruch his Latin, but being an enthusiastic follower of all the latest discoveries in the field of science and a great admirer of Giordano Bruno, he undoubtedly taught the boy several things which as a rule were not mentioned in an orthodox Jewish household. For young Spinoza, contrary to the customs of the times, did not board with the other boys, but lived at home. And he so impressed his family by his profound learning that all the relations proudly pointed to him as the little professor and liberally supplied him with pocket money. He did not waste it upon tobacco. He used it to buy books on philosophy. One author especially fascinated him. That was Descartes. René Descartes was a French nobleman born in that region between Tours and Poitiers where a thousand years before the grandfather of Charlemagne had stopped the Mohammedan conquest of Europe. Before he was ten years old he had been sent to the Jesuits to be educated and he spent the next decade making a nuisance of himself. For this boy had a mind of his own and accepted nothing without “being shown.” The Jesuits are probably the only people in the world who know how to handle such difficult children and who can train them successfully without breaking their spirit. The proof of the educational pudding is in the eating. If our modern pedagogues would study the methods of Brother Loyola, we might have a few Descartes of our own. When he was twenty years old, René entered military service and went to the Netherlands where Maurice of Nassau had so thoroughly perfected his military system that his armies were the post-graduate school for all ambitious young men who hoped to become generals. Descartes’ visit to the headquarters of the Nassau prince was perhaps a little irregular. A faithful Catholic taking service with a Protestant chieftain! It sounds like high treason. But Descartes was interested in problems of mathematics and artillery but not of religion or politics. Therefore as soon as Holland had concluded a truce with Spain, he resigned his commission, went to Munich and fought for a while under the banner of the Catholic Duke of Bavaria. But that campaign did not last very long. The only fighting of any consequence then still going on was near La Rochelle, the city which the Huguenots were defending against Richelieu. And so Descartes went back to France that he might learn the noble art of siege-craft. But camp life was beginning to pall upon him. He decided to give up a military career and devote himself to philosophy and science.