Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/585

Rh much which, both as criticism and as history, is of the highest philosophical importance, and that the student of speculation not only may study these disquisitions with advantage, but must master them if he would be a proficient in the science. But, nevertheless, I have taken the liberty of telling him in conversation and in print, that "all his expositorial ingenuity has not succeeded in conferring on that writer even the lowest degree of scientific intelligibility," meaning by scientific, the progressive deduction of one truth from another, in an ordered sequence. I now think of these things almost with regret, though not with compunction; for I should feel far more compunction if I thought that, even to spare him, I had swerved from my allegiance to the truth, or in the smallest degree equivocated. Not for one moment, however, did these trivial differences disturb our cordiality or interrupt our friendship. And whatever effect the promulgation of his opinion as to my philosophy may have had, God knows that I love him not one whit the less. This has not raised a speck the size of a man's hand upon the clear and boundless horizon of the affection which I bear him. From first to last my whole intercourse with Sir William Hamilton has been marked with more pleasure and less pain than ever attended, perhaps, my intercourse with any other human being. And now that he is gone, I cherish his memory with the most affectionate esteem. I cannot associate with