Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/605

Rh points which reason, considered simply as reason, and not as this or that particular reason, has in common. This task can be accomplished only when the truths in question are presented in the form of distinct propositions, and tested rigorously by the law of contradiction. Their opposites must be seen in every instance to be equivalent to the statement, that a thing is not what it is.

These remarks may help to establish, or at least to render intelligible, my fundamental principle, and also to show that the counter-hypothesis, which denies that reason has any common or essential characteristics, is both more precarious and more untenable. I have just to add, that the proposition which declares that all reason is subject to certain necessary laws, is laid down, not for the purpose of affording information in regard to the structure of all intelligence—that is a very subordinate consideration—but as supplying the only ground on which a science of metaphysics is possible. There is no mean between these two alternatives—either no metaphysics, or else this postulate.

The group of propositions regarding immensity, eternity, causation, receive their solution only when the relation of subject and object (that is, a mind present to all things) is assumed to be absolute in knowledge, for "Immensity" and "Eternity" are mere expressions of nonsense, unless an intelligence (or subject) is conceived of along with them. When