Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/243

RhPROP. VII.———— shore, without altering the structure of every blade and of every leaf, and the position of every particle of sand. The statement, if understood in reference to the existence of things, must be held to mean that matter itself, even in its ultimate atoms, has no persistency, no abiding footing in the universe, either in a compound or in an elementary capacity. But that dogma, thus nakedly presented, could scarcely expect to be welcomed as an article of any man's philosophical creed. It is untenable, because it is unintelligible.

17. On the other hand, if this announcement be understood, not in reference to the existence of things, but in reference to our knowledge of them, it becomes the truest and most intelligible of propositions. A mountain is a fluctuating and evanescent thing—in cognition, because no man is under the necessity of perpetually apprehending it: so is the sea; so is the whole earth, with all its variegated pomp, and the whole heavens, with all their diversified splendour. These things are the vanishing and the transitory in knowledge, because no law declares that they must be unceasingly and everlastingly known.

18. The question is, In which of these applications did the old philosophers intend their declaration to be received? The fact is, that they intended it to be received in both, and the consequence has been,