Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/69

Rh point. But if any one thinks otherwise, he has here made out to his hand a perfectly coherent scheme of psychological doctrine and of common opinion. He can embrace it if he likes, and abjure the true metaphysic altogether. He will find that truth and error are carried out simultaneously on parallel lines. He can make his choice between them.

§ 49. From this method of procedure, it is conceived that the following advantage will accrue. The reader will perceive, at each stage of his progress, which doctrine is right and which wrong. He will thoroughly understand each, through its contrast with the other. He will remark, not only what he is recommended to accept, but what he is recommended to give up. The incompatibility of the two opinions—the speculative and the common—will be obvious; and it will be seen that the conciliation of ordinary thinking, or "common sense," as it is sometimes rather abusively called, and philosophy, can be very well effected by the former giving in her submission to the decisions of the compulsory reason.

§ 50. A system which, on any subject, and more particularly on a subject like this, contents itself with merely laying down the true or correct doctrine on any point, does only half its work, and that half very imperfectly; because the wrong opinion, not