Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/39

Rh can advance only by going, in a manner, backwards. We have tried to get to the end, without having first got to the beginning. Philosophers aimed at the solution of problems, before they had got in hand the elements of their solution. The true state of the case is this: The world of speculation, like the physical globe, is rounded to a sphere, but a sphere of more gigantic compass and more difficult circumnavigation than any which the whole natural universe can show. The primitive articles of all thought, the seminal principles of all reason, the necessary constituents of all knowledge, the keys of all truth, lie, at first, buried under our very feet; but, as yet, we are not privileged to find them. We must first circumnavigate the globe; the whole world of speculation must be traversed by our weary feet. Hence every step forward carries us only farther and farther from the mark. Ere long the elements of truth—all that we are indistinctly looking for—lie in the far-distant rear, while we vainly think that we behold them glimmering on the horizon in our front. We have left them behind us, though we know it not—like decaying camp-fires, like deserted household gods. We still keep moving onwards in a direction which is, at once, wrong and right—wrong, because every step leads us farther and farther from the truth; right, because it is our doom. Every new halt increases our confusion, our consternation, and our dismay. Our hearts