SPINOZA. 117 journeyed to Amsterdam with the intention of giving his chief work, the Ethics, to the press, the clergy and the followers of Descartes applied to the government to forbid its issue. Soon after Spinoza's death it was published in the Opera Posthuma, 1677, which were issued under the care of Hermann Schuller,* with a preface by Spinoza's friend, the physician Ludwig Meyer, and which contained, besidesthe chief work, three incomplete treatises {Tractatus Poiitictis, Tractatus de Intellectits Emendatione, Compendium Grammatices Linguce Hebrczce) and a collection of Letters by and to Spinoza. The Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demon- strata, in five parts, treats (;«) of God, (2) of the nature and origin of the mind, (3) of the nature and origin of the emotions, (4) of human bondage or the strength of the passions, (5) of the power of the reason or human freedom. It has become known within recent times that Spinoza made a very early sketch of the system developed in the Ethics, the Tractatus Brevis de Deo et Homine ejusque Felicitate, of which a Dutch translation in two copies was discovered, though not the original Latin text. This treatise was published by Bohmer, 1852, in excerpts, and complete by Van Vloten, 1862, and by Schaarschmidt, 1869. It was not until our own century, and after Jacobi's Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Brief en an Moses Mendelssohn (1785) had aroused the long slumbering interest in this much mis- understood philosopher, who has been oftener despised than studied, that complete editions of his works were prepared, by Paulus 1802-03 ; Gfrorer, 1830; Bruder, 1843-46; Gins- berg (in Kirchmann's Pliilosophische Bibliothek, 4 vols.), 1875-82; and Van Vloten and Land,t 2 vols., 1882-83.
- See L. Stein in the Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i., 1888,
p. 554 seq.
For the literature on Spinoza the reader is referred to Ueberweg and to Van
der Linde's B. Spinoza, Bibliografie, 1B71 ; while among recent works we shall mention only Camerer's Die Lehre Spinozas, Stuttgart, 1877. [An English translation of The Chief PVorks of Spinoza has been given by Elwes, 1883-84 ; a translation of the Ethics by White, 1883 ; and one of selections from the Ethics, with notes, by Fullerton in Sneath's Modern Philosophers, 1892. Among the various works on Spinoza, the reader may be referred to Pollock's Spinoza, His Life and Times, 1880 (with bibliography to same year); Mar- tineau's Study of Spinoza, 1883 ; and J. Caird's Spinoza, Blackwood's Philo- sophical Classics, 1888.— Tr.]
