He deprecated general confessions and demanded that the individual must lay bare the recesses of his heart.
It is most difficult to appreciate aright this man of fervid imagination, of powerful and persistent convictions, of unbated honesty and love of truth, of keen insight into the errors (as he thought them) of his time, of a merciless will to lay bare these errors and to reform the abuses to which they gave rise, who in an instant offends us by his boasting, his grossness, his want of selfrespect.
In order to lay bare the ground of certainty he raises the universal doubt, and, although, following Augustine,2 he finds its limit in the thought of the doubter, this of itself is not enough.
And what Spinoza has to say of the requisites of definition and the marks of intellection makes it clear that insight comes with coherence, and that the work of method on the " inductive " side is by means of the unravelling of all that makes for artificial limitation to lay bare what can then be seen to exhibit nexus in the one great system.
The effect of this industry, however, is to lay bare a subsoil of diluvial sand which offers little inducement for subsequent cultivation.