universe
is an all-inclusive Reality which is the origin, source, and explanation
of all that is. All human experience, either of an inward or outward
world, if it is to have any meaning and reality at all, involves the
{127} existence of this inclusive Whole of Reality, that is of God. It
belongs, thus, fundamentally to the nature of human consciousness to know
God, for if we did not know Him we should not know anything else. The
moment a "finite thing" or a "finite idea" is severed from the Whole in
which it has its ground and meaning, it becomes _nothing_; it is "real"
only so long as it is a part of a larger Reality, and so every attempt to
understand a "flower in a crannied wall," or any other object in the
universe, drives us higher up until we come at last to that which is the
_prius_ of all being and knowledge, the explanation of all that is.

But this ultimate Reality up to which all our experience carries us--if
we take the pains to think out what is involved in the experience--is no
mere sum of "finites," no bare aggregation of "parts," no heaped-up
totality of separate "units." It is an Absolute Unity which binds all
that is into one living, organic Whole, a Divine Nature,--_natura
naturans_ Spinoza calls it,--and which lives and is manifested in all the
finite "parts," in so far as they are real at all. And as soon as the
mind finds itself in living unity with the eternal Nature of things, and
views all things from their centre in God, and sees how all objects and
events flow from the eternal Being of God, it is "led as by the hand to
its highest blessedness."[30] The complications of Spinoza's system, and
the difficulty of finding a "way down" from the Absolute Unity of God to
the differentiation of the modes of a world--_natura naturata_--here, in
space and time, do not now concern us.

The point of contact between Spinoza and the spiritual movement which we
are studying is found in his central principles that God is the _prius_
of all finite reality, that to know things or to know one's own mind
truly is to know God, and that a man who has formed a pure love for the
eternal is above the variations of temporal fortune, is not disturbed in
spirit by changes in the object of his love, but loves with a love which
eternally feeds the soul with joy.

{128}

During the most important period of his intellectual and spiritual
development, Spinoza spent three years (1660-1663) in the quiet village
of Ryn