Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/455

RhPROP. V.———— endeavours. Because if we are ignorant of matter per se, and if we are also ignorant of absolute existence (as may very well turn out to be the case), matter per se may, in these circumstances, be absolute existence, for anything that we can show to the contrary—or it may not be this. We are reduced to a condition of dubiety. We can neither affirm nor deny anything about "Being in itself" with any assured certainty. Our lips are sealed—our advance is blockaded. The issues of the system are sceptical and unsatisfactory. Science is out of the question,—for there is no science in an alternative conclusion: and, finally, we are driven to have recourse to those arts of vague conjecture and loose declamation which genuine speculation disdains. But let it be once proclaimed and demonstrated, as it has now been, that we cannot (without running into absurdity) suppose ourselves ignorant of matter per se any more than we can suppose ourselves cognisant of it,—and at the blast of that trumpet down fall all the obstructions and defences which have fortified, from time immemorial, the enchanted castle of ontology.