COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



no one more rigorously than by Spinoza, the 

 most inexorable in logical consistency of all 

 metaphysicians. With mathematical nicety Spi- 

 noza reasoned out a complete system of onto- 

 logy, in which the conclusions are so inseparably 

 bound up with the postulates that in order to 

 overthrow them it is necessary to begin by in- 

 validating the postulates. Could he have veri- 

 fied his postulates, he might have given us the 

 outlines of a system of absolute truth, thus at- 

 taining a more wondrous eminence than Galileo 

 or Newton. Unfortunately his postulates are 

 just the kind of propositions of which it must 

 be said that they can neither be established nor 

 refuted : the data for verifying them are inacces- 

 sible, and must ever remain so. His system 

 rests on the assumption that the noumenal cause 

 is like the phenomenal effect as rendered in 

 terms of consciousness, so that whatever is true 

 of the one is ipso facto true of the other. Herein 

 lay Spinoza's error. Here is the fundamental 

 distinction between the deductive method as 

 employed in mathematics, and as employed by 

 Spinoza in metaphysics. Mathematics starts 

 from simple propositions concerning quantita- 

 tive relations of number and extension, which, 

 are verified once for all by a direct appeal to 

 experience : it proceeds from the known to the 

 unknown. Metaphysics, as treated by Spinoza, 

 starts from complex propositions concerning 

 170 



