ns. We
do not know, therefore, that anything is certainly good, excepting that
which actually conduces to understanding, and, on the other hand, we do
not know that anything is evil excepting that which can hinder us from
understanding.

The highest thing which the mind can understand is God, that is to say,
Being absolutely infinite, and without whom nothing can be nor can be
conceived, and therefore that which is chiefly profitable to the mind,
or which is the highest good of the mind, is the knowledge of God.
Again, the mind acts only in so far as it understands and only in so far
can it be absolutely said to act in conformity with virtue. To
understand, therefore, is the absolute virtue of the mind. But the
highest thing which the mind can understand is God (as we have already
demonstrated), and therefore the highest virtue of the mind is to
understand or know God.

_THE MORAL VALUE OF THE EMOTIONS_

I

_General Principles_

That which so disposes the human body that it can be affected in many
ways, or which renders it capable of affecting external bodies in many
ways, is profitable to man, and is more profitable in proportion as by
its means the body becomes better fitted to be affected in many ways,
and to affect other bodies; on the other hand, that thing is injurious
which renders the body less fitted to affect or be affected.

Whatever is effective to preserve the proportion of motion and rest
which the parts of the human body bear to each other is good, and, on
the contrary, that is evil which causes the parts of the human body to
have a different proportion of motion and rest to each other.

In what degree these things may injure or profit the mind will be
explained below. Here I observe merely that I understand the body to die
when its parts are so disposed as to acquire a different proportion of
motion and rest to each other. For I dare not deny that the human body,
though the circulation of the blood and the other things by means of
which it is thought to live be preserved, may, nevertheless, be changed
into another nature altogether different from its own. No reason compels
me to affirm that the body never dies unless it is changed into a
corpse. Experience, indeed, seems to teach the contrary. It happens
sometimes that a man undergoes such changes that he cannot very well be
said to be the same man, as was the case with a certain Spanish poet of
whom I have heard, who was seized with an illnes