The third kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things; and the more we understand things in this manner, the more we understand God; and therefore the highest virtue of the mind, that is to say, the power or nature of the mind, or the highest effort, is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. The better the mind is adapted to understand things by the third kind of knowledge, the more it desires to understand them by this kind of knowledge. The highest virtue of the mind is to know God, or to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. This virtue is greater the more the mind knows things by this kind of knowledge, and therefore he who knows things by this kind of knowledge passes to the highest human perfection, and consequently is affected with the highest joy, which is accompanied with the idea of himself and his own virtue; and therefore from this kind of knowledge arises the highest possible peace of mind. The effort or the desire to know things by the third kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first kind, but may arise from the second kind of knowledge. This proposition is self-evident. For everything that we clearly and distinctly understand, we understand either through itself or through something which is conceived through itself; or, in other words, ideas which are clear and distinct in us, or which are related to the third kind of knowledge, cannot follow from mutilated and confused ideas, which are related to the first kind of knowledge, but from adequate ideas, that is to say, from the second and third kinds of knowledge. II Eternity is the very essence of God, in so far as that essence involves necessary existence. To conceive things therefore under the form of eternity, is to conceive them in so far as they are conceived through the essence of God as actually existing things, or in so far as through the essence of God they involve existence. Therefore our mind, in so far as it conceives itself and its body under the form of eternity, necessarily has a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God and is conceived through Him. We delight in whatever we understand by the third kind of knowledge, and our delight is accompanied with the idea of God as its cause. From the third kind of knowledge necessarily springs the intellectual love of God. For from this kind of knowledge arises joy attended with the idea of God as its cause, that is to say, the love of God, not in so far as we imagine Him as present, but in so far as we understand that He is eternal; and that is what I call the intellectual love of God. He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions rejoices, and his joy is attended with the idea of God, therefore he loves God, and (by the same reasoning) loves Him better the better he understands himself and his emotions.