in nothing more than a ray. Yet in another epistle Spinoza contradicts
this view, and declares that, while he does not consider it necessary
to "know Christ after the flesh, he does think it is necessary to know
the eternal Son of God, i.e. God's eternal wisdom, which is manifested
in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in
Christ Jesus."[58] In the _Ethics_ the distinction of man and the
animals is treated as an absolute distinction, and it is asserted with
doubtful consistency that the human soul cannot all be destroyed along
with the body, for that there is something of it which is eternal. Yet
from this eternity we must, of course, eliminate all notion of the
consciousness of the finite self as such. At this point, in short, the
two opposite streams of Spinoza's thought, the positive method he
_intends_ to pursue, and the negative or abstracting method he really
_does_ pursue, meet in irreconcilable contradiction. The finite must
be related to the infinite so as to preserve all that is in it of
reality; and therefore its limit or the negative element in it must be
abstracted from. But it turns out that, with this abstraction from a
negative element involved in the existence of the finite, the positive
also disappears, and God is all in all in a sense that absolutely
excludes the existence of the finite. "The mind's intellectual love of
God," says Spinoza, "is the very love wherewith God loves himself, not
in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be expressed by
the essence of the human mind, considered under the form of eternity;
i.e. the mind's intellectual love of God is part of the infinite love
wherewith God loves himself."[59] This double "in so far," which
returns so frequently in Spinoza, just conceals for a moment the
contradiction of two streams of thought, one of which must be
swallowed up by the other, if they are once allowed to meet.

General importance of the Cartesian school.

We have now reviewed the main points of the system, which was the
ultimate result of the principles of Descartes. The importance of this
first movement of modern philosophy lies in its assertion and exhibition
of the unity of the intelligible world with itself and with the mind of
man. In this point of view, it was the philosophical counterpart of
Protestantism; but, like Protestantism in its earliest phase, it passed
rapidly from th