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}

Perhaps it may clear the ground a little if we observe that Spinoza
often avoids a negative by a positive statement. Here he may intend to
show us what the love of God is not, that it is not what it is described
in the popular religion to be. "The only love of God I know," we may
imagine him saying, "thus arises. The adequate perception is the
keenest of human joys for thereby I see God Himself. That which I see
is not a thing or a person, but nevertheless what I feel towards it can
be called by no other name than love. Although the object of this love
is not thing or person it is not indefinite, it is this only which is
definite; 'thing' and 'person' are abstract and unreal. There was a
love to God in Kepler's heart when the three laws were revealed to him.
If it was not love to God, what is love to Him?"

To the eighteenth proposition, "No one can hate God," there is a
scholium which shows that the problem of pain which Spinoza has left
unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we
understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason