once have had no disparagement in its meaning; still less that
persons could have applied it to themselves. I chance to have met with a
case in point against them. It is Spinoza's _Philosophia Scripturae
Interpres, Exercitatio Paradoxa_, printed anonymously at Eleutheropolis, in
1666. This place was one of several cities in the clouds, to which the
cuckoos resorted who were driven away by the other birds; that is, a
feigned place of printing, adopted by those who would have caught it if
orthodoxy could have caught them. Thus, in 1656, the works of Socinus could
only be printed at Irenopolis. The author deserves his self-imposed title,
as in the following:[4]

"Quanto sane satius fuisset illam [Trinitatem] pro mysterio non habuisse,
et Philosophiae ope, antequam quod esset statuerent, secundum verae logices
praecepta quid esset cum Cl. Kleckermanno investigasse; tanto fervore ac
labore in profundissimas speluncas et obscurissimos metaphysicarum
speculationum atque fictionum recessus se recipere ut ab adversariorum
telis sententiam suam in tuto collocarent. {4} Profecto magnus ille vir ...
dogma illud, quamvis apud theologos eo nomine non multum gratiae iniverit,
ita ex immotis Philosophiae fundamentis explicat ac demonstrat, ut paucis
tantum immutatis, atque additis, nihil amplius animus veritate sincere
deditus desiderare possit."

This is properly paradox, though also heterodox. It supposes, contrary to
all opinion, orthodox and heterodox, that philosophy can, with slight
changes, explain the Athanasian doctrine so as to be at least compatible
with orthodoxy. The author would stand almost alone, if not quite; and this
is what he meant. I have met with the counter-paradox. I have heard it
maintained that the doctrine as it stands, in all its mystery is _a priori_
more likely than any other to have been Revelation, if such a thing were to
be; and that it might almost have been predicted.

After looking into books of paradoxes for more than thirty years, and
holding conversation with many persons who have written them, and many who
might have done so, there is one point on which my mind is fully made up.
The manner in which a paradoxer will show himself, as to sense or nonsense,
will not depend upon what he maintains, but upon whether he has or has not
made a sufficient knowledge of what has been done by others, _especially as
to the mode of doing it_, a preliminary to inventing knowledge for himself.
That a little know