Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/405

RhPROP. XXI.———— expand and clarify the faculties, both moral and intellectual.

4. As has been said, the want of an exact definition of the Absolute has rendered all the controversies on this topic resultless and unmeaning,—and has prevented any intelligible doctrine of the Absolute from obtaining a footing in philosophy, notwithstanding the exertions which have been put forth in its support by the metaphysicians of Germany. Another circumstance by which the confusion has been considerably aggravated is this, that neither party has distinctly stated whether the Absolute, about which they were fighting, was attainable as a product of common knowledge, or as an elaboration of scientific reflection: in other words, whether it was the possession of all men, or the property of the few who were philosophers. The opponents of the doctrine have usually supposed that the subject in dispute was of the latter character, and accordingly they have taunted their adversaries with laying claim to a knowledge which was not shared in by the community at large, and which, at any rate, could be realised only through a long meditative probation, and by dint of strenuous speculative efforts; and their adversaries have been at no pains to undeceive them. Hence the altercation has run into a very complicated form of