of the mind. A man's own
notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he really
sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in
itself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately with
the object of it. No doubt a man who professes to
have an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannot
doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists.
It is merely to say that as long as a man is certain of
this or that fact, he has no doubt of it. But neither
his certainty nor Spinoza's will be of any use to a man
who has no such idea, and who cannot recognize the
lawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at.

From the self-existing substance it is a short step to
the existence of God. After a few more propositions
following one another with the same kind of coherence,
we arrive successively at the conclusions that there is
but one substance, that this substance being necessarily
existent, it is also infinite, and that it is therefore
identical with the Being who had been previously defined
as the "Ens absolute perfectum," consisting of infinite
"attributes, each of which expresses His eternal and
infinite essence." Demonstrations of this kind were the
characteristics of the period. Des Cartes had set the
example of constructing them, and was followed by
Cudworth, Clerke, Berkeley, and many others besides
Spinoza. The inconclusiveness of their reasoning may
perhaps be observed most readily in the strangely
opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of the
nature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless
agreed, by the same method, to gather each out of their
ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully,
for it is the very key-stone of the Pantheistic system.
As stated by Des Cartes, the argument stands something
as follows:--God is an all-perfect Being,--perfection
is the idea which we form of him: existence is
a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The
sophism we are told is only apparent; existence is
part of the idea; it is as much involved in it, as the
equality of all lines drawn from the centre to the
circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle,
and a non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable
as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered
that in this way we may prove the existence of anything,
--Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian Gods; we have
but to define them as existing, and the proof is
complete. But in this objection there is r