which corresponds with its _ideate_.

7. The essence of anything which can be conceived as non-existent
does not involve existence.

Such is our metaphysical outfit of simple ideas with which to start upon
our enterprise of learning. The larger number of them, so far from being
simple, must be absolutely without meaning to persons whose minds are
undisciplined in metaphysical abstraction; they become only intelligible
propositions as we look back upon them with the light of the system
which they are supposed to contain.

Although, however, we may justly quarrel with such unlooked-for
difficulties, the important question, after all, is not of the obscurity
of these axioms, but of their truth. Many things in all the sciences are
obscure to an unpractised understanding, which are true enough and clear
enough to people acquainted with the subjects, and they may be fairly
made the foundations of a scientific system, although rudimentary
students must be contented to accept them upon faith. Of course, also,
it is entirely competent to Spinoza, or to any one, to define the terms
which he intends to use just as he pleases, provided it be understood
that any conclusions which he derives out of them apply only to the
ideas so defined, and not to any supposed object existing which
corresponds with them. Euclid defines his triangles and circles, and
discovers that to figures so described, certain properties previously
unknown may be proved to belong. But as in nature there are no such
things as triangles and circles exactly answering the definition, his
conclusions, as applied to actually existing objects, are either not
true at all or only proximately so. Whether it be possible to bridge
over the gulf between existing things and the abstract conception of
them, as Spinoza attempts to do, we shall presently see. It is a royal
road to certainty if it be a practicable one; but we cannot say that we
ever met any one who could say honestly Spinoza's reasonings had
convinced him; and power of demonstration, like all other powers, can be
judged only by its effects. Does it prove? does it produce conviction?
If not, it is nothing.

We need not detain our readers among these abstractions. The power of
Spinozism does not lie so remote from ordinary appreciation, or we
should long ago have heard the last of it. Like all other systems which
have attracted followers, it addresses itself, not to the logical
intellect, but to the im