Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/72

44 what has been pointed out as the retarding cause of philosophy, namely, a loose grasp, an indistinct perception, of its leading principles, of its very alphabet—an imperfect apprehension of the work it had to do, of the object it proposed to overtake; for surely, if these speculators had known what that work or object was, they would have said what it was, and moreover they would have done it. But on this topic they are either silent, or speak with such uncertain utterance that they might as well have been dumb. Hence,—men of the highest genius though they were, and

they have left behind them legacies, the value of which is greatly impaired by their frequent incomprehensibility, which, again, is attributable almost entirely, to the circumstance that they took, in hand only one-half of their proper work They may have given us truths—they no doubt did so; but truths are unintelligible, or nearly so, unless when contrasted with their opposing errors, and these they kept studiously out of view. Hence, to speak in a general way of these, and of many other philosophical writers, they are not to be understood; or if understood, it is not by any light which they themselves supply, but by a lamp which the reader must find and trim for himself, and bring with him to the research. The only light of every truth is its