Spinoza Dies

February 21, 1677

The excommunicated Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who had ground lenses to support himself while writing his Ethics, died in his rented rooms in The Hague at forty-four, probably of silicosis from the glass dust. His Ethics, published posthumously, would quietly scandalize Europe with its rational pantheism and influence thinkers from Goethe to Einstein who found in his pages a god made of geometry.