Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/307

RhPROP. X.———— to be withdrawn; but it becomes more than nothing, yet less than anything; what the logicians term "an excluded middle." The material world is not annihilated when the intelligible element is withdrawn—as some rash and short-sighted idealists seem inclined to suppose. Very far from that; but it is worse, or rather better, than annihilated: it is reduced to the predicament of a contradiction, and banished to the purgatory of nonsense.

22. Understand by Plato's sensible world () the absolutely incomprehensible and contradictory, and understand by his intelligible or real world () the sensible world as we now actually behold it, and his whole philosophy becomes luminous and plain. (This statement may require, as has been said, a slight qualification hereafter). But understand by his sensible world what we mean by the sensible world, and the case becomes altogether hopeless, confused beyond all extrication. Because, what then is his intelligible world? A thing not to be explained, either by himself, or by any man of woman born. There cannot be a doubt that his