Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/501

RhPROP. VI.————

1. Sixth Counter-proposition.—"Absolute Existence is, or at least may be, matter per se; in other words, mere material things have, or may have, a true and independent Being."

2. There can be no doubt that ordinary thinking embraces this counter-proposition in its most dogmatical expression, and asserts positively that mere material things not only may have, but have a true and absolute and independent existence. Psychology, too, has a decided leaning towards this positive asseveration, which is advocated more particularly by our whole Scottish philosophy of common sense. After all that has been said, it is unnecessary to do more than refer to this opinion as part of the débris of a defunct and exploded psychology, which is now swept away and effaced for ever from science by these ontological institutes.

3. When it is asserted that material things have no Absolute Existence, this must not be confounded with the affirmation that they have no existence at all. They have a spurious, or inchoate, or dependent existence. This has always been conceded by genuine speculation, although even this kind of existence may have been denied to them by some