imagination or memory, which they believe remain after death." The
intellectual love of the mind towards God is the very "love with which
He loves Himself, not in so far as He is infinite, but in so far as He
can be manifested through the essence of the human mind, considered
under the form of eternity; that is to say, the intellectual love of the
mind towards God is part of the infinite love with which God loves
Himself." {55b} "Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves
Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love of God towards men
and the intellectual love of the mind towards God are one and the same
thing." {55c} The more adequate ideas the mind forms "the less it
suffers from those affects which are evil, and the less it fears death"
because "the greater is that part which remains unharmed, and the less
consequently does it suffer from the affects." It is possible even "for
the human mind to be of such a nature that that part of it which we have
shown perishes with its body, in comparison with the part of it which
remains, is of no consequence." {56a}

Spinoza, it is clear, holds that in some way--in what way he will not
venture to determine--the more our souls are possessed by the
intellectual love of God, the less is death to be dreaded, for the
smaller is that part of us which can die. Three parallel passages may
be appended. One will show that this was Spinoza's belief from early
years and the other two that it is not peculiar to him. "If the soul is
united with some other thing which is and remains unchangeable, it must
also remain unchangeable and permanent." {56b} "Further, this creative
reason does not at one time think, at another time not think [it thinks
eternally]: and when separated from the body it remains nothing but
what it essentially is: and thus it is alone immortal and eternal. Of
this unceasing work of thought, however, we retain no memory, because
this reason is unaffected by its objects; whereas the receptive, passive