138 DEVELOPMENT OF CARTESIANISM. 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," * is the highest good and the highest virtue {YV.prop. 28). Blessed- ness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. The intellectual love of man toward God, in which the high- est 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 de- struction of the body {Y.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 passively affected. We are immortal only in adequate cognition and in love to God ; more of the wise man's soul is immortal than of the fool's. Spinoza's ethics is intellectualistic — virtue is based on knowledge. f It is, moreover, naturalistic — morality is a necessary sequence from human nature ; it is a physical product, not a product of freedom ; for the acts of the will are determined by ideas, which in their turn are the effects of earlier causes. The foundation of virtue is the effort after self-preservation : How can a man desire to act rightly unless he desires to be (IV. prop. 21, 22)? Since
- The conception amor Dei intellectualis in Spinoza is discussed in a disser-
tation by C. Lillmann, Jena, 1884. f That virtue which springs from knowledge is alone genuine. The pain- ful, hence unactive, emotions of pity and repentance may impel to actions whose accomplishment is better than their omission. Emotion caused by sym- pathy for others and contrition for one's own guilt, both of which increase present evil by new ones, have only the value of evils of a lesser kind. They are salutary for the irrational man, in so far as the one spurs him on to acts of as- sistance and the other diminishes his pride. They are harmful to the wise man, or, at least, useless ; he is in no need of irrational motives to rational action Action from insight is alone true morality.
