Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/311

RhPROP. X.———— which psychology gives her credit for. If we must have error, let us have it uncomplicated with confusion. If we must have sensualism, let us have it clear and undiluted. Vain are all the compromises of psychology—worse than vain, for they make error doubly obnoxious by rendering it plausible. In vain did Locke, whose hand it chiefly was, in modern times, that let loose the flood of sensualism—in vain did he make a stand in defence of the degraded intellect. A protest is impotent against a principle, and his own principle condemned him. He had acknowledged sense as an intellectual power; and hence, with all his saving clauses, he was swept away before the roaring torrent. In vain did Kant endeavour to stem the flood. He, too, had admitted that the senses, if they did not supply perfect cognitions, furnished, at any rate, some sort of intelligible data to the mind: so down he went, with all his categories, into the vortices of sensualism.

25. It may seem unfair to class Kant among the sensualists, of whom he was so unflinching an opponent. Nevertheless, the classification is correct. Many a philosopher lends unintentional support to the very doctrine he strenuously denounces, and unintentional opposition to the very doctrine he strenuously recommends. Thus has it been with Kant. The inconsistency would not signify were it not