Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/448

420PROP. V.———— laying the foundations of a science, it is better to over-do than to under-do the work. Part of the business of the epistemology was, by means of strict demonstration, to run a number of things, which have hitherto been a source of much trouble to philosophy, into a position in which it is evident that there can be no knowledge of them: the main business of the agnoiology is to run these same things, also by means of strict demonstration, into a position in which it is evident that there can be no ignorance of them, and thus to disable them from operating any longer as impediments to the onward march of speculation. This tactic is now humbly submitted to the judgment of philosophers, as the only true dialectical art, and as the only method by which the highest problems of philosophy can be settled, without any further appeal being competent.

2. The execution of this achievement—which is no optional or arbitrary stratagem devised by an individual theorist, but an inevitable evolution of the catholic understanding, thinking, not as it wishes, but as it must,—bears evidence to the advantage which accrues from a steadfast contemplation of the necessary truths of reason, and to the loss and disadvantage which ensue from their neglect. Many philosophers had eliminated matter per se, things by and in themselves, from our