Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/101

Rh unguardedly, that the first was the question of philosophy. Socrates very speedily undeceived him; for surely no philosophy is required to teach us that the different kinds of knowledge are the mathematical, the historical, the grammatical, and so forth. The other alternative, therefore (although Socrates here gives us no light), must be the question of philosophy, and it is so. It is the foundation- question—the beginning, with no anterior beginning; and its answer is the absolute starting-point of metaphysics, or speculative science.

§ 83. An anterior question may indeed be raised—Is there any identical quality, any common centre, any essential rallying-point in all our cognitions? But that question can be determined only by the result of the research. If there is no such point, or if no such point can be found, no philosophy is possible; but if such a common point or quality can be found, and is found, then philosophy can exist, and can go forth tracing out the consequences which flow from the answer she has given. That