Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/78

50 question—What is? We are in a somewhat better position; but our approach to ontology is still fenced and obstructed by a most baffling consideration, which is this:

§ 58. Absolute Being may be, very possibly, that which we are ignorant of. Our ignorance is excessive—it is far more extensive than our knowledge. This is unquestionable. After we have fixed, then, the meaning, the conditions, the limits, the object, and the capacities of knowledge, it still seems quite possible, indeed highly probable, that absolute existence may escape us, by throwing itself under the cover, or within the pale, of our ignorance. We may be altogether ignorant of what is, and may thus be unable to predicate anything at all about it. This is a most confounding obstacle to our advance. It has indeed, as yet, brought every inquirer to the dust, and thrown back every foot that has attempted to scale the hitherto unbreached and apparently impregnable fastnesses of ontology. Before commencing our operations, therefore, it will be prudent and necessary to hold a council of war.

§ 59. This difficulty is to be surmounted, not by denying or blinking our ignorance, but by facing it; and the only way of facing it, is by instituting an inquiry into its nature. We must examine and fix what ignorance is—what we are, and can be, ignorant of. And thus we are thrown upon an entirely