Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/404

376PROP. XXI.———— on all the grounds, and processes, and movements, and results of sheer speculative contemplation. It appears to the writer of these remarks, that no advantage to the intellect of man, but, on the contrary, very great detriment, must ensue from following such a sectarian course. What philosophy is called upon to exhibit is not what any individual may choose or wish to think, but what thinking itself thinks, whenever it is permitted to go forth free, unimpeded, and uninterfered with, guided by no law except the determination to go whithersoever its own current may carry it, and to see the end,—turning up, with unswerving ploughshare, whatever it may encounter in its onward course, trying all things by the test of a remorseless logic, and scanning with indifference the havoc it may work among the edifices of established opinion, or the treasures it may bring to light among the solitary haunts of disregarded truth. If this catholic temper cannot be reached, it may, at any rate, be approximated; and therefore, to furnish insight much rather than to produce conviction, is the object which these Institutes have in view, the assurance being felt that where insight is obtained, conviction will in all likelihood follow; and that conviction not founded on insight is worse than unprofitable; whereas philosophical insight, even when not succeeded by philosophical belief, can never fail to