The mind's absolute virtue is therefore to understand.

Now, as we have already shown, the highest that the mind can understand is God; therefore the highest virtue of the mind is to understand or to know God.

Q.E.D.
PROP.XXIX.

No individual thing, which is entirely different from our own nature, can help or check our power of activity, and absolutely nothing can do us good or harm, unless it has something in common with our nature.
Proof .-- The power of every individual thing, and consequently the power of man, whereby he exists and operates, can only be determined by an individual thing (I.xxviii.), whose nature (II.
vi.) must be understood through the same nature as that, through which human nature is conceived.

Therefore our power of activity, however it be conceived, can be determined and consequently helped or hindered by the power of any other individual thing, which has something in common with us, but not by the power of anything, of which the nature is entirely different from our own; and since we call good or evil that which is the cause of pleasure or pain (IV.