Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/60

32 point shall now obtain a full elucidation; for the discussion enables us to explain exactly the object or business of philosophy.

§ 39. This system is in the highest degree polemical; and why? Because philosophy exists only to correct the inadvertencies of man's ordinary thinking. She has no other mission to fulfil; no other object to overtake; no other business to do. If man naturally thinks aright, he need not be taught to think aright. If he is already, and without an effort, in possession of the truth, he does not require to be put in possession of it. The occupation of philosophy is gone: her office is superfluous: there is nothing for her to put hand to. Therefore philosophy assumes, and must assume, that man does not naturally think aright, but must be taught to do so; that truth does not come to him spontaneously, but must be brought to him by his own exertions. But if man does not naturally think aright, he must think, we shall not say wrongly—(for that implies malice prepense[Words italicized in earlier editions.] [sic]—but inadvertently; and if truth be not his inheritance by nature,—if he has to work for it, as he must for all his other bread,—then the native occupant of his mind, his birthright succession, must be, we shall not say falsehood—(for that, too, implies malice prepense[Words italicized in earlier editions.] [sic])—but it must be error. The original dowry, then, of universal man is inadvertency and error. This assumption is the