ttribute of Nature. For the infinite, with Spinoza, is not so much an
extent as a quality of being. Thus from the comprehension of any
particular thing, we can pass to a comprehension of the infinite and
eternal.

This is most commonly understood, curiously enough, not in religion, but
in art. The ecstatic power of beauty makes the soul lose all sense of
time and location. And in the specific object the soul sees an infinite
meaning. Indeed, one can almost say that the more specific or limited
the artistic object, the more clearly is the absolute or infinite
meaning portrayed and discerned. A sonnet is oftener than not more
expressive than a long poem; the _Red Badge of Courage_ reveals more
impressively than does the _Dynasts_ the absolute essential horror of
war. There are present, apparently, in the more pronounced mystical
visions, characteristics similar to those of significant esthetic
apprehensions. These visions are extremely rare and fleeting. But then
we can be at the highest peaks only seldom and for a short while. But in
a moment we see eternity, and in the finite, the infinite. It is for
this reason Spinoza says the more we understand particular things the
more do we understand God.

The great religious significance of Spinoza's doctrine of the
intellectual love of God is that it establishes religion upon knowledge
and not upon ignorance. The virtue of the mind is clearly and distinctly
to understand, not ignorantly to believe. There is no conflict between
science and religion; religion is based upon science. There is a
conflict only between science and superstition. Mysteries, unknown and
unknowable powers, miracles, magical rites and prayerful incantations
are instruments not of religion but of superstition which has its
origin in ignorant and ignominious fear.

The free man does not fear and he is not consumed by fear's boundless
conceit. He has no apprehensive conscience which unceasingly interprets
all unusual or untoward events as being deliberate signs of a god's
impending wrath. The free man knows that man is, cosmically considered,
impressively insignificant. Human loves and hatreds, human joys and
sorrows are, in the face of the eternal and infinite, the littlest of
little things. Human nature is only an infinitely small part of
absolutely infinite Nature; human life only a very tiny expression of
infinite life. Inordinate conceit alone could conceive Nature to have
been made designedly either