Painted portrait of Spinoza with long dark curls, in a black coat and white collar, against a sage green ground

Portraits · Philosophers & essayists · VI of XII

Baruch Spinoza

1632–1677 · Philosopher

…in order to work iron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been made…

Nam ut ferrum cudatur, malleo opus est, et ut malleus habeatur, eum fieri necessum est

Baruch Spinoza · On the Improvement of the Understanding, c. 1661–62
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Baruch Spinoza wrote this around 1661–62, in an unfinished treatise on how the mind can improve itself. If every tool needs an older tool, how did anyone begin? With the instruments nature gave, he says, making easy things laboriously and imperfectly, then better tools, step by step. The mind, he argues, works the same way.

Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, §30–31 (written c. 1661–62, unfinished; published in the Opera Posthuma, 1677). The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, tr. R. H. M. Elwes, vol. II (London: George Bell & Sons, 1883), p. 12; Latin from la.wikisource.

The originals

Oil portrait of Spinoza with long dark hair and a white collar
The likenessANONYMOUS PORTRAIT · c. 1665Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (17th-century painting, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel; PD-Art). The only portrait generally thought to date from his lifetime.
A handwritten letter in brown ink, dated Voorburg 1665 and signed B. de Spinoza, with library stamps
A letter, 1665A letter in Dutch, written at Voorburg on 3 June 1665 to Willem van Blijenbergh and signed B. de Spinoza. It mentions his Ethics, then still unpublished.Autograph letter to Willem van Blijenbergh, Voorburg, 3 June 1665 (Letter 27). Public domain, via spinozaweb.org and Wikimedia Commons.