{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0023/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Spinoza’s Correspondence: Spinoza-Authored Letters, English Manifestation",
    "author": "Baruch Spinoza",
    "date": "surviving correspondence, 1661-1676",
    "summary": "These letters written by Spinoza answer questions about God, infinity, freedom, the Bible, optics, and works in progress. Epistolary form reveals thought adjusted to particular correspondents rather than a continuous treatise.",
    "learning": "Distinguish Spinoza’s voice from correspondents, contextualize a reply, and compare epistolary formulation cautiously with published work.",
    "long_summary": "Spinoza clarifies a definition, refuses an objection, recommends an experiment, or explains disagreement with a friend. Correspondence connects metaphysics, science, and political caution while showing concepts before or after published formulation.\n\nThis projection preserves Spinoza’s letters and should not assign correspondents’ questions to him. Absent addressees, documentary loss, and translation limit context. A familiar or polemical sentence does not automatically have the status of a proposition demonstrated in the Ethics.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "Europe and the Atlantic, 15th-17th centuries",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Printing, artillery, clocks, ocean-going sail, and navigational instruments change the scale of states, trade, and travel.",
        "science": "Instrumented observation, calculation, anatomy, and astronomy gradually challenge inherited frameworks. Practice remains mixed with ancient authority.",
        "medicine": "Dissection, surgery, plants, and pharmacopoeias expand, but infection, pain, and epidemics remain poorly controlled.",
        "transport": "Walking, horses, coaches, river boats, and great sailing ships. Crossing an ocean takes weeks or months and remains dangerous.",
        "agriculture": "Grain, livestock, and gardens predominate; Atlantic exchange moves maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, and animals with major consequences.",
        "communication": "Printed books, broadsheets, letters, and regular posts speed circulation without making it instant.",
        "clothing": "Doublets, breeches, structured dresses, caps, ruffs, and cloaks use wool, linen, silk, and lace; rank strongly controls silhouette."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Printing, artillery, clocks, ocean-going sail, and navigational instruments change the scale of states, trade, and travel. Instrumented observation, calculation, anatomy, and astronomy gradually challenge inherited frameworks. Practice remains mixed with ancient authority. Dissection, surgery, plants, and pharmacopoeias expand, but infection, pain, and epidemics remain poorly controlled."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Walking, horses, coaches, river boats, and great sailing ships. Crossing an ocean takes weeks or months and remains dangerous. Printed books, broadsheets, letters, and regular posts speed circulation without making it instant."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Grain, livestock, and gardens predominate; Atlantic exchange moves maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, and animals with major consequences."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Doublets, breeches, structured dresses, caps, ruffs, and cloaks use wool, linen, silk, and lace; rank strongly controls silhouette."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "modern-philosophy",
        "label": "Modern and contemporary philosophy"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "modern",
        "label": "Modern era"
    },
    "languages": [
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/spinoza/letters_en/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 114,
            "role": "complete_source_selection",
            "sha256": "cc2ed3e9377f16911b0e73279be0227e741c3146b54e9728d6041feb73311fee",
            "source_id": "letters_en"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/spinoza/letters_en/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-11",
            "language": "fr",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 114,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "4d6830a619437164f74de4b6cb82dadafb5f31b4f142c4d65d146a670e176543",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "attribute",
            "label": "Attribute"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "faith",
            "label": "Faith"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship"
        },
        {
            "id": "hope",
            "label": "Hope"
        },
        {
            "id": "liberation",
            "label": "Liberation"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "perspectival_inquiry",
            "label": "Perspectival inquiry"
        },
        {
            "id": "poverty_wealth",
            "label": "Poverty and wealth"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "substance",
            "label": "Substance"
        },
        {
            "id": "truth",
            "label": "Truth"
        },
        {
            "id": "war_and_peace",
            "label": "War and peace"
        },
        {
            "id": "wisdom",
            "label": "Wisdom"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "spinoza.letters_en"
    ],
    "passages": 114,
    "word_count": 34964,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 34964,
        "fr": 34642
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "source-section-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "section",
                "label_fr": "Section",
                "label_en": "Section"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Section",
        "leaf_en": "Section"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:spinoza.letters_en:section-0023",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0023",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "To your further question, whether things and their modifications are eternal truths, I\nanswer: Certainly. If you ask me, why I do not call them eternal truths, I answer, in\norder to distinguish them, in accordance with general usage, from those propositions,\nwhich do not make manifest any particular thing or modification of a thing; for\nexample, nothing comes from nothing. These and such like propositions are, I repeat,\ncalled eternal truths simply, the meaning merely being, that they have no standpoint\nexternal to the mind, &c.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTER XXIX. (XII.)\n\nSpinoza To L. M.1(Lewis Meyer).\n\nDearest Friend,—\nI have received two letters from you, one dated Jan. 11, delivered to me by our friend,\nN. N., the other dated March 26, sent by some unknown friend to Leyden. They were\nboth most welcome to me, especially as I gathered from them, that all goes well with\nyou, and that you are often mindful of me. I also owe and repay you the warmest\nthanks for the courtesy and consideration, with which you have always been kind\nenough to treat me: I hope you will believe, that I am in no less degree devoted to\nyou, as, when occasion offers, I will always endeavour to prove, as far as my poor\npowers will admit. As a first proof, I will do my best to answer the questions you ask\nin your letters. You request me to tell you, what I think about the infinite; I will most\nreadily do so.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "À votre autre question, qui est de savoir si les choses et leurs modifications sont des vérités éternelles, je réponds : certainement. Si vous me demandez pourquoi je ne les appelle pas vérités éternelles, je réponds que c'est afin de les distinguer, conformément à l'usage général, des propositions qui ne rendent manifeste aucune chose particulière ni aucune modification d'une chose ; par exemple, rien ne vient de rien. Ces propositions et d'autres semblables, je le répète, sont appelées simplement vérités éternelles, ce qui signifie seulement qu'elles n'ont aucun point de vue extérieur à l'esprit, etc.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTRE XXIX. (XII.)\n\nSpinoza à L. M.1 (Louis Meyer).\n\nTrès cher ami,\nJ'ai reçu deux lettres de vous, l'une datée du 11 janvier, que notre ami N. N. m'a remise, l'autre datée du 26 mars, envoyée à Leyde par un ami inconnu. Elles m'ont été toutes deux fort agréables, surtout parce que j'en ai conclu que tout va bien pour vous et que vous pensez souvent à moi. Je vous dois et vous rends également les remerciements les plus chaleureux pour la courtoisie et la considération avec lesquelles vous avez toujours eu la bonté de me traiter. J'espère que vous croirez que je ne vous suis pas moins dévoué, comme je m'efforcerai toujours de le prouver lorsque l'occasion s'en présentera, autant que mes faibles forces le permettront. Comme première preuve, je ferai de mon mieux pour répondre aux questions que vous posez dans vos lettres. Vous me demandez de vous dire ce que je pense de l'infini ; je le ferai très volontiers.",
            "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol",
            "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-11",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "19225993d536c965a5ef895c9323c847cd7b8234eb0f86588f47bc981da87b40"
}