example, he uses the argument (depending upon a conception familiar to the metaphysicians of the previous age), that benevolence, consisting in regard to 'Being in general,' must be due to any being in proportion to the degree of existence (ii. 401). Now 'all other being is as nothing in comparison of the Divine Being.' God is 'the foundation and fountain of all being and all perfection, from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; whose being and beauty is, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence, much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day' (ii. 405). As he says in the companion treatise, 'the eternal and infinite Being is, in effect, being in general, and comprehends universal existence' (vi. 59). The only end worthy of God must, therefore, be his own glory. This is not to attribute selfishness to God, for 'in God, the love of Himself and the love of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, because God's being, as it were, comprehends all' (vi. 53). In communicating His fulness to His creatures, He is of necessity the ultimate end; but it is a fallacy to make God and the creature in this affair of the emanation of the Divine fulness, 'the opposite parts of a disjunction' (vi. 55). The creature's love of God and complacence in the Divine perfections are the same thing as the manifestation of the Divine glory. 'They are all but the emanations of God's glory, or the excellent brightness and fulness of the Divinity diffused, overflowing, and, as it were, enlarged; or, in one word, existing _ad extra_' (vi. 117). In more familiar dialect, our love to God is but God's goodness making itself objective. The only knowledge which deserves the name is the knowledge of God, and virtue is but the knowledge of God under a different name.