- Date
- 1661.08.26
- Ep
- 1
- Sender
- Henry Oldenburg
- Sent from
- London, Pall Mall
- Recipient
- Benedictus Spinoza, de
- Received in
- Rijnsburg, Spinozahuis
- OP NO.
- I
- OP PP.
- 395–6
- NS OP.
- I
- NS PP.
- 449–50
The manuscript is no longer extant.
Annotations
Presumably, Henry Oldenburg met Spinoza in Rijnsburg when he visited nearby Leiden and, virtually certain, the encounter took place when Oldenburg travelled from [Amsterdam] to Utrecht, sometime before 29 July 1661. Almost three weeks after Oldenburg had safely returned (9 August 1661) in London, he dispatched a letter to Spinoza on 26 August, in which he invited him to start a philosophical correspondence.
He writes in his letter of 26 August 1661 about their earlier encounter:
In Rijnsburg we talked about God, about infinite Extension and Thought, about the difference and agreement of these attributes, about the way the human soul is united with the body, and about the Principles of the Cartesian philosophy and of the Baconian.
(G 4/5–6).
The letter of 16/26 August, the earliest one known in Spinoza’s exchange, marks the beginning of the long-termed epistolary contact with Oldenburg.
