Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/37

Rh , or such a defeat as a billiard-player might be supposed to sustain at the hands of a chess-player. These incongruous contests are entirely attributable to the circumstance that philosophy has not been reasoned out from the bottom, and that the disputants have no common question before them on which they have joined issue.

§ 16. As time has advanced, it has constantly sped worse with philosophy, instead of speeding better. This could not be otherwise: to carry forward a pure science, the first principles of which are not thoroughly ascertained, and to carry it forward by other means than that of strict demonstration, is only to add layer after layer to the winding-clothes which already cover up the truth; it is only to add another coating to the infinite litterings of the Augean stable, whose pavement no son of Adam can get down to. Every question in philosophy is the mask of another question; and all these masking and masked questions require to be removed and laid aside, until the ultimate but truly first question has been reached. Then, but not till then, is it possible to decipher and resolve the outside mask, and all those below it, which come before us in the first instance. Instead, however, of removing these successive masks, each succeeding inquirer undertakes to unriddle the outermost one off-hand; and the consequence is, that, so far from resolving