Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/298

270PROP. X.———— done so, intellect then contributes the element which is required to change nonsense into sense; it adds to that which is more than 0 but less than 1, the additament which is required to make it 1: it confers on the mere sensible world the element necessary to its apprehension; it thus converts the contradictory into the comprehensible, and constitutes and compasses the intelligible.

14. There can be no question that the old philosophers were right both in their conception of the true problem of philosophy, and in their manner of working it. The conversion of the unintelligible into the intelligible—to exhibit how that conversion is effected was the problem they took in hand; and this is one of the forms, and one of the very best, in which the highest problem of speculation can be presented. Their next step was to find and fix their unintelligible, their contradictory; because if there was no unintelligible, or if it could not be found, of course there was an end both to the problem and to its solution. Accordingly they fixed matter per se as the contradictory. But if this contradictory is to be converted into the noncontradictory, it must be brought, in some way or other, before the mind. Their next step, therefore, was to find the means by which this was effected. The senses were held to be these means. The function assigned to the senses was that of bringing