Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/493

RhPROP. III.———— proposition is postulated or presupposed by the very terms of the inquiry, and must be conceded by all who enter on the study of metaphysics. The ultimate problem of the science is, What it truth?—(See Introduction, § 54.) This problem necessarily takes for granted two points: first, that truth is; and secondly, that truth is not nonsense or the contradictory. The science is not called upon to prove that truth is, and that it is not the contradictory. This must be conceded. The science is merely called upon to find out and prove what truth is; it merely undertakes to affix to truth some predicate descriptive and explanatory of its character. In the same way the science is not called upon to prove either that Absolute existence is, or that it is not the contradictory. It takes, and must be allowed to take, this for granted: it is merely called upon to find out and demonstrate what Absolute Existence is; in other words to affix to it some predicate declaratory of its nature and character. In this respect the metaphysician resembles the mathematician, who is not called upon to prove either that his diagrams are, or that they involve no contradiction, but simply to demonstrate what relations they and their various parts bear to one another. So that if the foregoing demonstration should appear not altogether satisfactory, the reader is requested to remember that the proposition is one which the science is entitled to postulate, and one which even