I1G COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. I. 



invalidating the postulates. Could he have verified his 

 postulates, lie might have given us the outlines of a system 

 of absolute truth, thus attaining a more wondrous eminence 

 than Galileo or Newton. Unfortunately his postulates ara 

 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 inaccessible, and must ever remain so. 

 His system rests on the assumption tliat the noumenal cause 

 is like the phenomenal effect as rendered in terms of con- 

 sciousness, 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 quantitative relations of number and extension, 

 which are verified once for all by a direct appeal to ex- 

 pei'ience : it proceeds from the known to the unknown. 

 Metaphysics, as treated by Spinoza, starts from complex 

 propositions concerning 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 un- 

 doubtedly justified, from his own point of view, in declaring 

 that the philosopher 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 Spinoza reached their conclusions. The method 

 of mathematical deduction, as legitimately applied by Newton 

 to verifiable postulates, led to a discovery prolific in perma- 

 nent and magnificent results ; as illegitimately applied by 

 Spinoza to unverifiable postulates, it led to an isolated 

 system of ontology, barren of results, accepted in its inexor- 

 able completeness by no one, — yet irrefutable, save by the 

 refutation of all metaphysics. 



Spinoza's ontological conclusions, being at once obnoxious 



