How was Ethics published after Spinoza’s death?

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Engraved portrait of Benedict de Spinoza by Friedrich Roth-Scholtz, showing Spinoza in formal 17th-century attire with a circular symbol in the upper left corner. — Benedict de Spinoza Benedict de Spinoza.

Although Benedict de Spinoza completed his masterpiece, the Ethics, by 1675, he chose to delay its publication after being advised that it would provoke even greater controversy than his earlier work, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.12

Following Spinoza’s death in 1677, the Ethics was finally published at the instigation of his friends, who were members of the Collegiants—a mystic-Protestant group in Amsterdam that resisted formal creeds. The work was released alongside two other texts: the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and his unfinished political work, the Tractatus Politicus.12