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SPINEL 29 SPINOZA, BARITCH position: When pure, alumina, 72.0; magnesia, 28 . = 100, corresponding with the formula, MgOALOs; but the magnesia is often partly replaced by other protoxides, and the alumina by sesquioxides, giving rise to many varie- ties. Dana thus distinguishes them: (1) Ruby or magnesia-spinel; with sp. gr. 3.52-3.58; (a) spinel-ruby, deep red: (6) balas-ruby, rose-red; (c)rubicelle, yellow or orange-red; (d) almandine, violet. (2) Ceylonite, or iron-magnesia spinel = pleonaste, containing much iron; color, dark green to black. (3) Magnesia-lime-spinel; color, green. (4) Chlorospinel ; color, grass-green, with the iron constituent as sesquioxide. (5) Picotite, containing over 7 per cent, of oxide of chromium. SPINET, in music, a musical stringed instrument resembling the harpsichord, and, like that instrument, now super- seded by the pianoforte. Each note had but one string, which was struck by a quilled jack acted on by one of the finger keys. The strings were placed horizontally, and nearly at right angles to the keys; and the general outline of the instrument resembled that of a harp laid in a horizontal position, on which account the spinet, when first intro- duced, was called the couched harp. SPINGARN, JOEL ELIAS, an Ameri- can educator and author, born in New York in 1875. He was educated at Columbia and Harvard and from 1899 to 1911 was successively tutor, adjunct- professor, and professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. He took an active interest in politics as a Progressive Republican, was chairman of the board of directors of the Na- tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and in 1919 became a member of the board of directors of a New York publishing house. During the World War he was a major of in- fantry. He wrote: "A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance" (1899); "The New Criticism" (1911); "The New Hesperides and Other Poems" (1911); "Creative Criticism" (1917). He also edited "Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (3 vols. 1908-1909) ; "Temple's Essays" (1909), etc. SPINOZA, BAEUCH, or BENEDICT DE SPINOZA, a Dutch philosopher; born in Amsterdam, Holland, November 24, 1632. He was trained in Talmudic and other Hebrew lore by Rabbi Morteira; acquired a knowledge of Latin from the C freethinking physician Van den Ende; came under the influence of the new philosophic teaching of Descartes; ceased to attend the synagogue; refused a pension offered by the rabbis for his conformity, and was expelled from the Israelitish community; fled from Am- sterdam to the suburbs to escape the BARUCH SPINOZA enmity of the fanatical Jews; removed from thence, after five years' seclusion, to Rynsburg, where he lived till 1663; subsequently went to Voorburg; and ul- timately (1671) settled in The Hague. By his craft as a grinder of optical lenses he maintained a frugal position in the households of the friends with whom he lived. He refused a pension from the French king and a professor- ship in Heidelberg because their ac- ceptance might hazard freedom of thought and conduct; but he accepted a legacy from his friend De Vries. The first result of his labor was published anonymously in 1670 under the title of "Theological-Political Tract," and be- cause it put forth a strong plea for liberty of speech in philosophy it was placed on the "Index" by the Catholics and condemned by the authorities in Holland. Such, indeed, was the storm which this treatise occasioned that the author himself published nothing fur- ther. After his death all his unpub- lished writings were conveyed to Am- sterdam, and there the "Posthumous Works" was published (1677). In the "Ethics," therein included, his system of philosophy was developed ; each of its five books being dignified by a series of axioms and definitions after the method of Euclid in his geometry. In all there are 27 definitions, 20 axioms, and 8 postulates; and the central conception of the whole system is that God, who Is Cyc — Vol. IX