The Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

...For he asserts theoretically not only a union or joining, but a simple and intrinsic unity of finite things with the Infinite. It does not seem that any other remedy can be opposed to this error than this: that the philosopher, regarding the method he ought to follow in reasoning, should more often render an account to himself anew and solicitously, and not rest in that rigid connection 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 porisma corollary. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a genealogical deduction of a sort where, if eight or sixteen pure ancestors follow one another, the matter is finished. No, only if the whole lineage of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and this origin itself is illustrious by the certainty of its series, can that pneumatikē spiritual nobility, hē alētheia truth, be seen as sufficiently proven.

But I pause. For the readers will say it ill becomes an editor to act as the author’s censor. And what an author indeed! I am glad that this is certain to me: that this very author, if only it were possible to address him while alive, would never have received these doubts of ours with an offended spirit, nor would he have been angered at others philosophizing according to their own character. Furthermore, I thought that the second of the two points I brought forth should be explained for the reason that it might be evident that the theoretical intellect is not necessarily (which has indeed seemed so to some philosophers, though I think it would detract too much from the powers of the intellect!) driven to Pantheism. This rather seems to happen only then if those who use the intellect theoretically hold the law of the intellect, or formal thinking, as the only law, also constituting the existence indicated by thought. In this matter, too, it seems to me that it is not Philosophy that is to be blamed, but the Philosophers, if I may be permitted to profess this freely, however conscious I am of my own insignificance in philosophizing. Nor do I foresee that those who are less friends to themselves than they are to philosophy itself could take this indignantly.