Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/601

Rh "What sort of an argument is that ? Even admitting that human reason is perplexed between these contradictories, does it necessarily follow, does it follow as a fair inference from that admission, that there are no truths which can be predicted of reason universally, that there are no laws which are valid for all intellect, without considering whether it is this, or that, or the other intellect ? Can we not admit that man's reason is imperfect, and, in reference to some questions, impotent, and yet stop short of the conclusion that in no respect whatever is it akin to a higher order of intelligence, supposing such to exist? Does our admission justify the inference that there are no conditions to which all knowledge and all thought are necessarily subject ? Does it disprove the legitimacy of maintaining that there are such laws ? To come nearer to the point : because human knowledge explodes, in some instances, in contradictions, is that any reason for denying the truth of the assertion, that "every intelligence must be cognisant of itself, when it is cognisant of anything else"? (proposition first of the Institutes, and the principle from which the whole subsequent deductions proceed.) Surely there is no force in such reasoning. It is equivalent to this : because intelligences differ in degree and power of enlightenment, therefore they can have nothing whatsoever in common. Should any one allege that the workings of human thought, as manifested in these contradictory propositions