When this process fails to yield a satisfactory understanding, De Vries
continues, “we have deemed it worthwhile to . . . write to you so that, if
possible, it should be made clearer to us.”
Given this protocol, it is not surprising that Spinoza’s letters often re-
spond to specific queries—a 1663 letter to Meyer provides at some length
“my considered views on the question of the infinite,” while a 1664
message to Jelles replies to a query concerning “the difference between
Hobbes and myself” in matters of political theory. Several letters de-
voted to scientific topics contain illustrative drawings (one to Jelles has
three). But for all their seriousness and focus upon the topics under dis-
cussion Spinoza’s letters have their deeply personal moments. The two
to Bouwmeester address him as “very special friend,” and at least two
(to Bouwmeester and to Balling) take an almost pleading tone in asking
for a speedy reply. In other letters he asks not for replies but for visits—
Meyer is urged to “kindly pay me a visit . . . as soon as you possibly can.”
A 1665 letter to Bouwmeester complains of “many circumstances which
make me think . . . you have completely forgotten me.”
The fullest general expressions of Spinoza’s elevated conception of
friendship’s emotional and philosophic rewards, however, come not
from letters to his friends but from the Ethics itself and from his ini-
tial response to one William Blydenburgh, who had addressed him in
flattering terms (he’d read the Descartes commentary) and presented
himself as motivated “only by zeal for truth.” Spinoza fell hard for this
and replied fulsomely: “What I most value,” he wrote, “is to enter into a
bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth.” Such a tie, he continues,
“has the power to effect a close union between different sentiments and
dispositions.”
Spinoza would be spectacularly disappointed in his high hopes for
Blydenburgh, who ended up as Burgomaster of Dordrecht on a defender-
of-the-faith platform buttressed by two lengthy books denouncing the
Tractatus (in 1674) and the Ethics (in 1682). But the enthusiasm of his
initial response is also on view in the Ethics itself, where it is noted first
that “our intellect would be less perfect if the mind were in solitude”
and second that “if two individuals of completely the same nature are
combined, they compose an individual twice as powerful as each one
singly” [Ethics, IV, Prop. 18, Scholium]. Again and again the point is
emphasized—men “guided by reason” have compelling motives to join
together in friendship: “It is of the first importance to men to establish
close relationships and bind themselves together with such ties as may
