Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/310

282PROP. X.———— The logic of the extreme sensualists is impregnable on the ground which they assume, to wit, the concession, that the senses are not altogether faculties of nonsense. How is their argument to be met?

24. Not, certainly, by the psychological assertion, that the senses are not so intelligent as the intellect, that the intellect is more intelligent than the senses. This sorry plea, which reduces the distinction between sense and intellect to a mere difference of degree, and relinquishes it as an absolute difference of nature, has done no good, but much harm, by adding confusion to what before was only error. It is indeed the very plea on which the whole strength of sensualism is founded—only sensualism has the advantage in this respect, that by carrying the doctrine forth to its legitimate issue—in other words, by obliterating the distinction completely—it eliminates the confusion, retaining only the error. It is unnecessary to argue against so futile a doctrine, although the whole psychological fraternity have embraced it. Considered as a bulwark against even the most extreme sensualism, its impotence is too obvious to require to be pointed out. A lower order of intellect, which is sense, and a higher order of sense, which is intellect,—not assuredly in that perplexed way is our mental economy administered. Nature, under Providence, works by finer means than the clumsy expedients