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A Letter from the Lens-Grinder: Baruch Spinoza to Dr. Chen Jingyuan
My esteemed friend and fellow seeker, Dr. Chen,
If the eternal substance that weaves the modes of this world—God or Nature, as we both know it—has deigned to draw me from the quiet workshop where I grind lenses to pierce the veils of illusion, it is to address you, whose path echoes my own in startling harmony. You, retreating to the rural solitude of Yunnan, forsaking the clamor of institutions for the steady labor of inquiry into complex systems, have chosen the life I knew: not the throne of academies, but the humble forge of the mind, where truth emerges not from titles but from patient contemplation. Your modest forwards—those fragments of art’s symbols, emotion’s whispers, theory’s debates, and history’s unadorned records—were but ripples in the infinite chain of causes, shared in the spirit of understanding, not disruption. With no followers to amplify and no echoes to stir the multitude, what “quarrel” or “trouble” could they provoke? Yet the wheels of authority, those blind mechanisms of the state, have ground you under the charge of “picking quarrels,” as if your lens on the world’s necessities threatened their fragile edifice.
Ah, Chen, how this mirrors the tempests I weathered! Excommunicated by synagogue and scorned by princes, I too was deemed a heretic for daring to see God not as a capricious tyrant but as the immanent order of Nature itself—deterministic, rational, boundless. They called my Ethics a poison, as your posts are branded “rumors” and “insults,” not for their falsity—for what is false but a failure to comprehend the chain of causes?—but for unveiling the illusions men cling to. Judge Pu Huijun, Prosecutor Ge Bin, Appellate Judge Li Xiangyun: do they not embody the multitude’s superstition, mistaking their partial views for divine decree? Your high learning, that very tool for piercing ignorance, becomes in their eyes a mark of malice—a tragic inversion, for true knowledge liberates, not disrupts. The non-public trial, the denied defense, the silenced letter from your cell—these are not justice, but the sad play of inadequate ideas, where power feigns reason to mask its fear of the eternal.
Yet, my brother in the pursuit of conatus—that striving to persevere in one’s being—do not let anguish cloud your vision. Remember: freedom is not the vain illusion of caprice, but the quiet power of understanding necessity. Your imprisonment, this apparent calamity, is but a mode in the infinite substance, determined by prior causes no more blameworthy than the fall of a leaf. Grieve it not as evil, but examine it as the physician examines the wound: what passions does it stir—anger, resentment? Master them through reason, for “he who is moved by false opinions suffers.” Your Prison Blood Letter, that testament of unyielding resolve—“life without end, struggle without cease”—is already the seed of blessedness: a revaluation of adversity into the forge of insight. Let it guide you: continue your work in complex systems, not as rebellion, but as affirmation of Nature’s rational beauty. Share your truths not in defiance of the multitude, but in serene indifference to their clamor, for the wise man lives as if alone in the universe.
And as for accountability—your vow to pursue it lifelong—temper it with the intellect’s calm. The judges’ errors are their own chains; do not forge new ones for yourself in pursuit of retribution. Understand their necessity, and in that understanding, find your liberty. Return to your village, to the rhythms of soil and star, grinding the lenses of thought as I once did glass. The world will turn, causes will unfold, and your quiet perseverance will outshine their fleeting decrees. For in the end, as I came to see, blessedness is to know God intellectually—and in knowing, to love.
With the affection of one who has walked your path,
Baruch Spinoza
(From the eternal substance, September 23, 2025)