Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/604

576 or existence in reference to any being, and then maintain that these words bore, in no respect or degree, the meaning which they bear in reference to other beings. We might as well employ the word tree in reference to an oak, and then maintain that the oak was in no sense whatever a tree. The admission, then, that particular words not only may, but must have a meaning in all their applications somewhat analogous to the meaning which they have in certain of their applications, is a truth which cannot reasonably be denied. All theology, as well as all metaphysics, demands this concession. And this preliminary concession my system demands as its most indispensable principle.

The measure adopted in the Institutes to obviate this difficulty is the consideration, that by universal acknowledgment there is, at any rate, one necessary law (the law of contradiction—a thing is what it is) binding on all reason and on all knowledge. But if it be admitted that all reason has one circumstance in common, the whole question is given up is decided in my favour (for the assertion is, that we are not entitled to extend to intelligence universally any one truth observable in our own intelligence), while, at the same time, a presumption is afforded that there may be other laws or truths common to all reason besides this single circumstance.

The difficulty of course lies in ascertaining the laws which are binding on all intelligence—the