My favourite story about Spinoza concerns the time he lost his cool. A philosopher, a Jew and history’s finest defender of Enlightenment, Spinoza was normally a picture of quiet reason. But when he heard about the lynching of Johan and Cornelis de Witt he became gripped by an uncommon fury. The de Witt brothers were key political figures in the Dutch Republic, the enlightened new nation in which Spinoza enjoyed such great liberty to think and write. On 20 August 1672, at The Hague, they were set upon by a ferocious mob that held them responsible for the invasion of the republic by a French-English alliance. They were murdered, mutilated and clumps of their flesh were eaten.
