Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/81

Rh out—of the attempt, namely, to get to the end, before we have got to the beginning. Numerous examples of the fatal effects of this preposterous (in the exact sense of that word) procedure, will come under our notice in the course of this work. It should, therefore, be especially borne in mind, that the epistemology excludes most rigorously from its consideration, every opinion, and every question as to "being" or existence. It deals only with knowing and the known.

§ 63. In connection with these remarks on the what (or business, §§ 39-45), on the why (or reason, § 46), and on the how (or method, §§ 47-52), of philosophy in general; and on the character and details of these Institutes in particular (§§ 53-62), an observation, entitled to a separate paragraph, remains to be made, which is this, that the correction of the inadvertencies of our natural thinking will be seen to be carried on throughout each of the sections of the system. Our natural oversights in regard to knowing and the known, are taken up and put right in the epistemology; our natural oversights in regard to ignorance are taken up and put right in the agnoiology; and our natural oversights in regard to being are taken up and put right in the ontology.

§ 64. Another consideration, also, of some