The Remaining Works of Benedict de Spinoza

For he theoretically asserts not only a union or unity of finite things with the Infinite, but a simple and intrinsic unity. No other remedy seems capable of being opposed to this error than this: that a philosopher should, regarding the method he ought to follow in reasoning, render an account to himself more often and solicitously, and not settle for that rigid chain of consequences as a criterion of truth, but resolve to recall to examination with suspicious severity the first premises he assumes, as often as he elicits a new πόρισμα corollary. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a genealogical deduction, as if, when eight or sixteen pure ancestors follow one another, the matter is finished. No, unless the whole pedigree of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and this very origin itself is illustrious in the certainty of its series, that πνευματική spiritual nobility, ἡ ἀλήθεια the truth, cannot seem sufficiently proven.

But I pause. For it ill becomes an editor, readers will say, to play the censor of an author. And what an author indeed! I am glad that this is certain to me: that this very author, if it were to happen that one could address him while living, would never receive these doubts of ours—whatever they might be—with an offended mind or with irritation at others philosophizing according to their own genius. Moreover, I thought that one of the two points I have brought up should be explained for the reason that it might be evident that the theoretical intellect is not necessarily (a thing which has indeed seemed so to some philosophers, though I think it detracts too much from the powers of the intellect!) driven to Pantheism.