Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/513

RhPROP. IX.———— for their existence was obtained; for we can scarcely maintain that one thing is the cause of another, without conceding that the former thing exists. But now, when this doctrine is set aside as untenable—now, when it is held that material things are not, and cannot be, the causes of our perceptions, and when it is further maintained that these are to be attributed to an entirely different origin, the question may reasonably be put—What evidence is there in support of the existence of matter? The material universe is now superfluous and otiose. It has no part to play—no purpose to fulfil. Our perceptive cognitions are brought about without its aid. All goes on as well, or better, without it. It is a mere cumberer of the ground,

Why not say at once that it is a nonentity? Thus scepticism and idealism are the consequences, not very far removed, of the assumption that matter has an absolute existence. Commencing with the hypothesis that matter exists absolutely, philosophers have been led on, by the inevitable windings of the discussion, to doubt or to deny that it exists at all.

9. It might have been expected that these, perplexities would have thrown philosophers back upon a severer examination of the data on which