Now, let any one examine these "definitions," and he will find that they are wholly arbitrary, and that he is not bound by any law of his intellectual nature to admit them, still less entitled, on any ground of experience, to assume and found upon them, as if they were self-evident or axiomatic truths. It is possible, and it may even be legitimate and useful for the purposes of philosophical speculation, to classify the various objects of human knowledge by ranging them under the categories of Substance, Attributes, and Modes. But is it a self-evident truth, that there can be no substance in nature excepting such as is self-existent and eternal? Is it a self-evident truth that man, with his distinct personality and individual consciousness, is a mere "mode" or affection of another being? Is it a self-evident truth that the ape, the lizard, and the worm are equally "modes" of the same substance with the angel and the seraph? Is it a self-evident truth that _extension_ and _thought_ are equally expressive of the uncreated Essence and necessary "attributes" of the Eternal? Is it a self-evident truth that no being can exist in nature otherwise than by _development out of the Divine substance_, and that the _creation_ of a distinct but dependent being is impossible? In regard to questions such as these, the appeal must lie to that common sense, or those laws of thought, which are the heritage of every thinking mind, and which cannot be cramped or fettered by the arbitrary definitions of any philosophical system whatever. 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.