Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/553

RhPROP. XI.——————— of the ontology, the research has been led, not by any purpose aforethought, but simply by the winding current of the speculative reason, to whose guidance it had implicitly surrendered itself. That current has carried the system, nolens volens, to the issue which it has reached. It started with no intention of establishing this conclusion, or any conclusion which was not forced upon it by the insuperable necessities of thought. It has found what it did not seek; and it is conceived that this theistic conclusion is all the more to be depended upon on that very account, inasmuch as the desire or intention to reach a particular inference is almost sure to warp in favour of that inference the reasoning by which it is supported. Here metaphysics stop; here ontology is merged in Theology. Philosophy has accomplished her final work; she has reached by strict demonstration the central law of all reason (the necessity, namely, of thinking an infinite and eternal Ego in synthesis with all things); and that law she lays down as the basis of all religion.

3. Eleventh Counter-proposition. "The universe by itself, or out of relation to all intelligence, is, or may be, a necessary existence." This counter-proposition, which is the ground of all atheism, is effectually subverted by the proposition which is the ground of all Theism; but the atheistic position