De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem

For he asserts theoretically 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 than this: that the philosopher should more frequently and solicitously account to himself for the method he ought to follow in reasoning, and should not rest content with that rigid chain of consequences as a criterion of truth, but should resolve to re-examine with severe scrutiny the primary premises he assumes, whenever he elicits a new porisma corollary. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a sort of genealogical deduction, by which, if sixteen pure great-grandmothers follow one another, the matter is concluded. No, unless the whole pedigree of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and this origin itself is illustrious by the certainty of its series, that spiritual nobility, the aletheia truth, cannot seem sufficiently proven.

But I pause. For it will be said that it ill becomes an editor to act as a censor of an author, and indeed an author of such importance! I am glad, however, that I am certain of this: if it were possible to address this author while he were alive, he would never receive these doubts of ours with an offended spirit or become angry at others philosophizing according to their own genius. Furthermore, I thought that one of the two points I have raised should be explained for this 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!) forced into Pantheism. This rather seems to happen only if those who use the intellect theoretically take the law of the intellect, or formal thinking, as the sole law also constituting the existence indicated by thought. In this matter, therefore, it seems that not Philosophy is to be blamed, but Philosophers; let me be allowed to profess this freely, however much I am conscious 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.