ii RATIO AND INTELLECTUS 341 



and third of the arguments by which it is supported, 

 are all verbally close to Bruno's argument in the Infinite 

 and in the De Immenso. So the effort of all finite 

 things after self-conservation, 1 and their consequent 

 movement, are explained not mechanically, through the 

 action of one material thing upon another, but rather 

 spiritually, through the unity of nature in which all 

 share. Thus even that possibility of an action of thought 

 upon matter (extension) is allowed, which in the Ethics 

 is, formally at least, denied. In the Tractate also 

 there is more emphasis laid upon the goodness of God, 

 as the source of the infinite world of finite beings, 

 whereas in the Ethics a logical, mechanical necessity 

 takes its place. It is in the second, more mystical and 

 ethical part, of the treatise, however, that the influence 

 of the Nolan philosopher is most apparent, and here it 

 is the Summa Terminorum or Heroici Furori that seems 

 to have formed the direct or indirect source of many of 

 the conceptions such, for example, as the distinction 

 between Ratio and Intelkctus. Ratio is discursive Ratio, 

 thought, building up knowledge by successive steps ; 

 Intellectus " intuitive thought, "direct and simultaneous 

 perception of the whole of the object the only ade- 

 quate or complete form of knowledge, for which 

 reasoning is merely a preparation in us. Our know- 

 ledge of God, so far as it is possible at all, is of the 

 second type : we cannot know Him as he is, through 

 His effects, His creation : it is only the few to whom He 

 reveals Himself that can know Him as He is, by direct 

 contact with Him. Yet this revelation is constantly 

 open to all men ; for each and all God is, always, inti- 



1 " // desk di conser-varsi " of Bruno. Pollock (Spinoza, p. 109) refers to Descartes, 

 Prin. Phil. 2, chs. 37 and 43, and Spinoza's Cog. Met. (pt. i. ch. 6, 9), where the 

 ** effort " is " the thing itself," whereas in the essay it is providence, i.e. God. Cf. 

 part i., ch. 5, with Ethica, iii. 6 and 7. 



