tellectual good is more or less permanent, more or less inclusive,
more or less valuable than a sensory good. This is the real moral
problem man is faced with. And this is the moral problem Spinoza
considers and solves.

Everybody knows what is Spinoza's solution. One permanent intellectual
good is, according to him, of more importance and value in the life of
man than countless transitory sensory pleasures. The object most
permanent in character and greatest in value is Nature or God. The
highest virtue of the mind, therefore, the highest blessedness of man,
consists in the intellectual love of Nature or God. Thus Spinoza passes
from ethics to religion, which in his thought almost imperceptibly blend
together.

VIII

The beginning and the end, as familiar wisdom has long since propounded,
are the same. The ultimate origin of man is God, and the final end, the
blessed crown of life, is to return to God in fullest knowledge and
love. The philosopher who was during his lifetime and for over a century
after his death constantly execrated for being an atheist (he
occasionally still is by some hardy fools) made God a more integral part
of his system than did any one else in the whole history of philosophy.
Spinoza did not do occasional reverence to God; he did not, in lightly
passing, perfunctorily bow to Him; God is the veritable beginning and
end of all his thought.

The intellectual love of God does not demand as basis a knowledge of the
cosmic concatenation of things. Omniscience alone could satisfy such a
demand. The intellectual love of Nature or God depends solely upon a
knowledge of the order of Nature, upon a knowledge of the infinite and
eternal essence of God. And such knowledge is within the limits of our
reach.

We can apprehend the eternal essence of God because the temporality of
our thought is accidental to its meaning. It is the nature of reason to
see things under the form of eternity. And we can apprehend the infinite
essence of God or Nature because every particular finite thing is a
determinate expression of the infinite. The law of causality requires
that there be an essential identity of nature between cause and effect;
otherwise it would follow that something can be produced from nothing.
Since cause and effect belong to the same realm of existence, to the
same attribute of Nature, whenever we apprehend the essence of a
particular thing, we necessarily apprehend the infinite essence of that
a