De Piscibus Libri V et De Cetis Liber Unus

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 more often and solicitously render an account to himself regarding the method he ought to follow in reasoning, and should not rest in that rigid chain of consequences as a criterion of truth, but should resolve to re-examine with severe suspicion the primary premises he assumes, whenever he elicits a new porisma deduced conclusion. For the nobility of truth cannot be proven by a genealogical deduction, as if the matter were finished once eight or sixteen pure ancestors followed one another. Unless the entire lineage of consequences ascends without a stain to its first origin, and this very origin itself is illustrious in the certainty of its series, that πνευματικη, ἡ αληθεια spiritual nobility, the truth cannot seem sufficiently proven.

But I pause. For it is ill-befitting, readers will say, for an editor to act as a 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 possible to address him while he was alive, would never have received these doubts of ours, whatever they might be, with an offended spirit, nor would he have been angered by others philosophizing according to their own disposition. Moreover, I considered that the second of the two points I brought up should be explained for this reason also, so that it might be clear that the theoretical intellect does not necessarily (which has indeed seemed to be the case to some philosophers, though I think it would detract too much from the powers of the intellect!) lead to Pantheism. This appears to happen only when those who use the intellect theoretically hold the law of the intellect or formal thinking to be the sole law, also constituting the existence indicated by thought. Therefore, it is my view that in this matter also, one should not blame Philosophy, but rather the Philosophers, if I may be permitted to profess this freely, however much I am conscious of my own humbleness in philosophizing. Nor do I foresee that those who are less friends to themselves than they are to philosophy itself could take this ill.