Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/351

RhPROP. XIV.———— worth knowing, while all worth knowing is hidden impenetrably from our comprehension? This morbid supposition is not humility—it is either laziness or stupidity trying to look respectable in the garb of a mock modesty; or else it is scepticism assuming the airs of superior wisdom; or else it is timidity pretending to be caution; or else it is hypocrisy endeavouring to curry favour with the Governor of the universe, by disparaging the faculties which He has endowed us with. Whatever it is, it ought no longer to be endured. Our intellectual tether is sufficiently short without any misdirected psychological curtailing. The agnoiology will show that we are quite weak and ignorant enough without affecting to be still more ignorant and weak.

4. The restoration of the important philosophical terms "phenomenon" and "substance" to their true and original significations, by supplying (inter alia) the only definitions which afford any conception of them, is the main object of this and the three following propositions. In connection with no metaphysical words, whether considered in themselves or in their history, does greater confusion and incorrectness of thought prevail; and therefore, if speculative science is ever to acquire solidity and exactitude, it is essential that this mistiness and error should be removed.