SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



substance per se and causa efficiens, which have 

 not been and cannot be verified. It ventures 

 into the unknown without having first secured 

 a- basis of operations in the known. So that, 

 while Hegel was undoubtedly justified, from his 

 own point of view, in declaring that the phi- 

 losopher must either be a Spinozist or nothing, 

 our refuge from the dilemma is to be found in 

 our denial of the validity of that subjective 

 method by the aid of which Hegel and Spi- 

 noza reached their conclusions. The method of 

 mathematical deduction, as legitimately applied 

 by Newton to verifiable postulates, led to a 

 discovery prolific in permanent and magnificent 

 results ; as illegitimately appHed by Spinoza to 

 unverifiable postulates, it led to an isolated sys- 

 tem of ontology, barren of results, accepted in 

 its inexorable completeness by no one, — yet 

 irrefutable, save by the refutation of all meta- 

 physics. 



Spinoza's ontological conclusions, being at 

 once obnoxious and apparently inevitable, pro- 

 duced a crisis in philosophy, serving to raise 

 doubts as to the validity of the subjective 

 method, and to call in question the truth of the 

 postulate that whatever is in the Idea is also in 

 the Fact. It was thought necessary to stop and 

 reconsider the processes by which our initial 

 conceptions in metaphysics are obtained ; and 

 thus for more than a century pure ontological 

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