The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

For he asserts theoretically not only a union or unification of finite things with the Infinite, but a simple and intrinsic unity. No other remedy seems capable of being opposed to this error except this: that the philosopher should frequently and solicitously render an account to himself anew regarding 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 suspicious severity the first premises he assumes, whenever he elicits a new porisma corollary/deduction. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a genealogical deduction, as if the matter were finished because eight or sixteen pure ancestors followed one another. No, that pneumatike spiritual nobility, he aletheia the truth, can be seen to be sufficiently proven only if the whole lineage of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and if this origin itself is also illustrious by the certainty of the series.

But I pause. For the readers will say it ill becomes an editor to act the part of a censor of the author. And of what an author, indeed! Yet I rejoice that this very author, if it were to happen that one could address him while he were alive, would receive these doubts of ours—never with an offended mind, and never stomaching others who philosophize according to their own genius—with equanimity. Furthermore, I thought that the second of the two points I raised should be explained for this reason: that it might be evident that the theoretical intellect is not necessarily (a thing which has seemed so to some philosophers, though I think it would detract too much from the powers of the intellect!) driven to Pantheism.