The Highest Endeavor Of The Mind

From Part V of the Ethics (1677), in Spinoza's account of the intellectual love of God (amor intellectualis Dei). Intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) is the third and highest kind in Spinoza's system, above imagination and discursive reason. Through it, the mind grasps singular things in their eternal necessity, seeing how they flow from the nature of God or Nature (Deus sive Natura). Achieving this mode of understanding is, for Baruch Spinoza, the closest a finite mind can come to freedom and blessedness.