 At the same time it must be allowed that there is a strong apophatic streak in much pantheism. In contrast to his teacher, Thales, who thought it possible to specify the ground of all things as water, for Anaximander the one source from which cosmos comes forth (to apeiron) is construed precisely in terms of its resistance to any determinate characterisation, while both Eriugena and Ibn ‘Arabi stress that although the God of which we can speak is identical with the cosmos, there remains another sense in which we cannot speak of God at all. The essence of God considered in himself, the universal ground of being cannot itself be captured by any of the limited categories which flow out from it. Even Spinoza suggests that the highest stages of knowledge consist in a form of intuitive insight, which transcends mere reasoning or conceptual knowledge in that it enables us to grasp the essence of individual things. Part of what he calls ‘the intellectual love of God’, such scientia intuitiva is itself assigned a salvific role in Spinoza’s thought; it is the path to human blessedness.