But does the sanction of beyond-the-grave exist, and is the soul immortal, and are we to be rewarded therein in another life? The conclusion of Spinoza on this matter is hesitating, but at the risk of misrepresenting it, which I fear to do, it seems to me that it can be thus summed up--_The soul makes itself immortal_, in proportion as by the knowledge and love of God it participates more in God. In proportion it makes itself divine; and approaching perfection, by the same progress it also approaches immortality. It is conceivable that by error and sin it kills itself, and by virtue renders itself imperishable. This immortality is not or does not seem to be personal, it is literally a definite re-entry into the bosom of God; Spinozian immortality would therefore be a prolongation of the same effort which we make in this life to adhere to universal order; the recompense for having adhered to it here below is to be absorbed in it there, and in that lies true beatitude. Here below we ought to see everything from the point of view of eternity (_sub specie aeternitatis_), and this is a way of being eternal; elsewhere we shall be in eternity itself. LEIBNITZ.--Leibnitz possessed a universal mind, being historian, naturalist, politician, diplomatist, scholar, theologian, mathematician; here we will regard him only as philosopher. For Leibnitz the basis, the substance of all beings is not either thought or extension as with Descartes, but is force, productive of action. "What does not act does not exist." Everything that exists is a force, either action or tendency to action. And force, all force has two characteristics: it desires to do, it wishes to think. The world is the graduated compound of all these forces. Above all there is the supreme force, God, who is infinite force, infinite thought; by successive descents those base and obscure forces are reached which seem to have neither power nor thought, and yet have a minimum of power and even of thought, so to speak, latent. God thinks and acts infinitely; man thinks and acts powerfully, thanks to reason, which distinguishes him from the rest of creation; the animal acts and thinks dimly, but it does act and think, for it has a soul composed of memory and of the results and consequences of memory, and by parenthesis "three-fourths of our own actions are governed by memory, and most frequently we act like animals"; plants act, and if they do not think, at least feel (which is still thought), though more dimly than animals; and finally in the mineral kingdom the power of action and thought slumber, but are not non-existent since they can be transformed into plants, animals, and men, into living matter which feels and thinks.