Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/278

250PROP. IX.———— means exactly the reverse. It signifies that part of a thing which carries no light itself, and on which no light can be thrown. The "essence "is the point of darkness, the assumed element in all things which is inaccessible to thought or observation. It is a synonym for the superlatively incomprehensible, the superlatively incogitable. Other words, as shall be shown hereafter, have been tampered with in the same way.

11. No great mischief can ensue from the reversal of the meaning of a philosophical term, provided those who employ it in its modern signification are aware of the sense in which it was formerly used, and are careful to record the distinction between the two acceptations. No precaution of this kind has been observed in the case of the word "essence." The ancients are supposed by our psychologists to have understood the term in the sense in which they understand it; and hence the charge has gone forth against them that they prosecuted their inquiries into matters which are inaccessible to the faculties of man and hopelessly incomprehensible. Never was there a more unfounded accusation. They prosecuted their researches, we are told, into the essence of things; and this, we are assured by a wiser generation of thinkers, lies beyond the limits of human cognition. What you choose to call the essence of things may be of this character,