Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/51

Rh § 29. A short but important observation may here be made, that ready acceptance, instantaneous acquiescence, is not the criterion of necessary truth, although it is very generally regarded as such. Our whole natural thinking, as shall be distinctly proved in the body of this work, consists of a series of judgments, each of which involves a mental contradiction,—in other words, controverts a necessary truth or law of reason. But certainly it is not to be expected either that these judgments should be seen to present contradictions the moment they are uttered, or that the ideas of reason by which they are supplanted should be instantaneously acquiesced in as necessary. All important necessary truths require a much longer time, and a much more sedulous contemplation, to obtain the assent of human intelligence than do the contingent ones.

§ 30. From this explanation we return to the subject more immediately in hand, the retarding causes of philosophy. The unfounded assumption that the class of necessary truths, or laws of reason, is either null or of very limited extent—and the effrontery with which their investigation has been proscribed as an illegitimate pursuit,—have contributed more directly than any other cause to arrest the improvement of speculation, and to render it a vague and unreasoned science: for philosophy executes her proper functions only when dealing with