Ethica (in Opera Posthuma)

The Latin Opera Posthuma (1677) is the true first of the Ethics and the original-language text. Its Dutch twin, De Nagelate Schriften van B.d.S. (1677), was prepared by the same circle and printed for the same bookseller and appeared alongside it; both are dated 1677 and both are collected — the Latin as the original, the Dutch as the first edition in Dutch. There is no contemporary English edition: the Ethics reached print in English only in the 1880s, with W. Hale White's Ethic (London: Trübner, 1883) the first published English translation and R.H.M. Elwes's version in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza vol. II (London: George Bell & Sons, 1883–84) close behind. George Eliot's 1856 English rendering stayed unpublished for well over a century, so it is not a print precedent.