The Collected Works of Benedict de Spinoza

For he asserts theoretically that there is not only a union or unity, but a simple and intrinsic identity of finite things with the Infinite. It does not seem that any other remedy can be opposed to this error except this: that the philosopher should more often, and with care, render an account to himself of the method he ought to follow in reasoning, and not rest in that rigid chain of consequences as a criterion of truth, but resolve to re-examine with severe suspicion the first premises he assumes, as often as he elicits a new πορισμα corollary. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a genealogical deduction, as if the matter were finished because eight or sixteen pure ancestors follow one another. Nobility, that πνευματικη spiritual ἡ αληθεια truth, can only be seen as sufficiently proven if the whole chain of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and this very origin itself is illustrious in the certainty of its series.

But I stop. For, readers will say, it ill becomes an editor to act as a censor of an author. And indeed, of such an author! I am glad that this is certain to me: that this very author, if it happened that one could address him while he was alive, would never receive these doubts of ours with an offended spirit, nor would he be annoyed at others philosophizing according to their own genius. Moreover, I thought that the second of the two points I brought up should be explained for this reason: so that it might be clear that the theoretical intellect is not necessarily driven to Pantheism (a view that has indeed appeared to some philosophers, though I think it detracts too much from the powers of the intellect!). This rather seems to happen only if those who use the intellect theoretically take the law of the intellect or formal thinking as the only law, also constituting the existence indicated by thought. Therefore, I may be permitted to freely profess—as much as I am conscious of my own insignificance in philosophizing—that it is not Philosophy that should be blamed in this matter, but the Philosophers. And I do not foresee that those who are less friends to themselves than they are to philosophy itself could take this indignantly.