ided by reason. The passive emotions of sensuous desire are directed to
perishable objects, the active, which spring from reason, have an eternal
object--the knowledge of the truth, the intuition of God. For reason there
are no distinctions of persons,--she brings men into concord and gives them
a common end (IV. _prop_. 35-37,40),--and no distinctions of time (IV.
_prop_. 62, 66), and in the active emotions, which are always good, no
excess (IV. _prop_. 61). The passive emotions arise from confused ideas.
They cease to be passions, when the confused ideas of the modifications of
the body are transformed into clear ones; as soon as we have clear ideas,
we become active and cease to be slaves of desire. We master the emotions
by gaining a clear knowledge of them. Now, an idea is clear when we cognize
its object not as an individual thing, but in its connection, as a link in
the causal chain, as necessary, and as a mode of God. The more the mind
conceives things in their necessity, and the emotions in their reference to
God, the less it is passively subject to the emotions, the more power it
attains over them: "Virtue is power" (IV. _def_. 8; _prop_. 20, _dem_.). It
is true, indeed, that one emotion can be conquered only by another stronger
one, a passive emotion only by an active one. The active emotion by which
knowledge gains this victory over the passions is the joyous consciousness
of our power (III. _prop_. 58, 59). Adequate ideas conceive their objects
in union with God; thus the pleasure which proceeds from knowledge of,
and victory over, the passions is accompanied by the idea of God, and,
consequently (according to the definition of love), by _love toward God_
(V. _prop_. 15, 32). The knowledge and love of God, together, "intellectual
love toward God,"[1] is the highest good and the highest virtue (IV.
_prop_. 28). Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
The intellectual love of man toward God, in which the highest peace of the
soul, blessedness, and freedom consist, and in virtue of which (since it,
like its object and cause, true knowledge, is eternal), the soul is not
included in the destruction of the body (V. _prop_. 23, 33), is a part of
the infinite love with which God loves himself, and is one and the same
with the love of God to man. The eternal part of the soul is reason,
through which it is active; the perishable part is imagination or sensuous
representation, through which it is passi