“God is free from passions, nor is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow.” “No one can hate God.” “He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return.” “This love to God cannot be defiled either by the effect of envy or jealousy, but is the more strengthened the more people we imagine to be connected with God by the same bond of love.” The proof of the first of these propositions, using language somewhat different from that of the text, is as follows:—There is no affection of the body of which the mind cannot form some clear and distinct conception, that is to say, of everything perceived it is capable of forming a clear and adequate idea, not exhaustive, as Spinoza is careful to warn us, but an idea not distorted by our personality, and one which is in accordance with the thing itself, adequate as far as it goes. Newton’s perception that the moon perpetually falls to the earth by the same numerical law under which a stone falls to it was an adequate perception. “Therefore,” continues the demonstration (quoting the fifteenth proposition of the first part—“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God”), “the mind can cause all the affections of the body to be related to the idea of God.” Spinoza, having arrived at his adequate idea thus takes a further step to the idea of God. What is perceived is not an isolated external phenomenon. It is a reality in God: it _is_ God: there is nothing more to be thought or said of God than the affirmation of such realities as these. The “relation to the idea of God” means that in the affirmation He is affirmed. “Nothing,” that is to say, no reality “can be conceived without God.” But it is possible for the word “love” to be applied to the relationship between man and God. He who has a clear and adequate perception passes to greater perfection, and therefore rejoices. Joy, accompanied with the idea of a cause, is love. By the fourteenth proposition this joy is accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, and therefore love to God follows. The demonstration seems formal, and we ask ourselves, What is the actual emotion which Spinoza describes? It is not new to him, for in the _Short Treatise_, which is an early sketch for the _Ethic_, he thus writes:—“Hence it follows incontrovertibly that it is knowledge which is the cause of love, so that when we learn to know God in this way, we must necessarily unite ourselves to Him, for He cannot be known, nor can he reveal Himself, save as that which is supremely great and good. In this union alone, as we have already said, our happiness consists. I do not say that we must know Him adequately; but it is sufficient for us, in order to be united with Him, to know Him in a measure, for the knowledge we have of the body is not of such a kind that we can know it as it is or perfectly; and yet what a union! what love!” {50}