Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/301

RhPROP. X.———— there is this difference as to what the universal is: with Pythagoras it was "number; "with Plato it was "idea;" with this system it is the "ego."

17. Having thus stated the doctrine of the early speculators in distinct and explicit terms, we have now to balance the account. Considerable deductions must be made on the score of ambiguity and confusion, although not to such an extent as to throw the smallest suspicion on the accuracy of the exposition just given of their views, in so far as intention and aim are concerned. The old philosophers did not explain themselves at all clearly. Their problem was not distinctly enunciated; and what was still more misleading, instead of calling sense the faculty of nonsense, which was unquestionably their meaning, they laid it down simply as the faculty of sense; and instead of calling sensible things nonsensical things, they were usually satisfied with calling them sensible things, or at least they were not at pains to announce with unmistakable precision that sensible things () are strictly identical with senseless or contradictory things ().

18. Out of these ambiguities the three following leading misconceptions have arisen—mistakes which, now pervading the whole body of speculative science, have rendered the study of metaphysic a discipline