This love to God is the highest good which we can seek according to the dictate of reason; is common to all men; and we desire that all may enjoy it. It cannot, therefore, be sullied by the emotion of envy, nor by that of jealousy, but, on the contrary, it must be the more strengthened the more people we imagine to rejoice in it.
It is possible to show in the same manner that there is no emotion directly contrary to this love and able to destroy it, and so we may conclude that this love to God is the most constant of all the emotions, and that, in so far as it is related to the body, it cannot be destroyed unless with the body itself. What its nature is, in so far as it is related to the mind alone, we shall see hereafter.
IV
All ideas, in so far as they are related to God, are true; that is to say, are adequate, and therefore, (by the general definition of the Emotions), God is free from passions. Again, God can neither pass to a greater nor to a less perfection, and therefore He cannot be affected with any emotion of joy or sorrow.
He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return. If a man were to strive after this, he would desire that God, whom he loves, should not be God, and consequently he would desire to be sad, which is absurd.
V
God is absolutely infinite, that is to say, the nature of God delights in infinite perfection accompanied with the idea of Himself, that is to say, with the idea of Himself as cause, and this is what we have called intellectual love. God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual love.
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.
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.
Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love of the mind towards God are one and the same thing.