These definitions must commend themselves _as true_, either by their own self-evidencing light, or by their manifest conformity with experience, before they can be assumed and founded on in any process of reasoning; and we are very sure that those which have been specified cannot be candidly examined without appearing to be, as they really are, the grossest instances of a _petitio principii_ that have ever been offered to the world.

For these "definitions" constitute the foundation of the whole superstructure; they contain the germ, which is subsequently expanded and developed in a long series of propositions; and, as they are assumed without proof, while they are far from being self-evident, no amount of logical power and no effort of dialectic skill can possibly extract from them any doctrinal results, whether theological, ethical, or political, possessing greater evidence than what belongs to themselves.

This is our _first_ objection.
2.

The philosophical method of Spinoza, as applied to our special subject, is radically vicious.

It is not the inductive or experimental method; it is an argument _a priori_, a deductive process of reasoning.
Now, this method, suitable as it is to a certain class of subjects, such as those of Geometry, in which clear and precise definitions are attainable, is either utterly inapplicable to another class of subjects, such as most of those of which Spinoza treats, or it is peculiarly dangerous, especially in the hands of a daring speculator, since, in the absence of adequate definitions, he may be tempted to have recourse to such as are purely arbitrary.