Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/85

Rh think, and feel and speak, it is to be hoped, just like his neighbours. He can look at things just as they look at them, otherwise they would have excellent reasons for regarding (as they are too apt to do without any such good provocation) his very name as an abomination. It is enough for him to know that there is a higher region of thought and of truth into which he can ascend at will, with those who choose to go along with him, though neither he nor they need be constantly resident therein. Is a poet always a poet? No. Down both poet and astronomer, and down, too, philosopher must come—down from their aerial altitudes—their proper regions—and out of these regions they must consent to pass the greater portion of their time. But when the philosopher is a philosopher; when he has put on, like Prospero, his "garment;" when he has ascended to his watch-tower in the skies, and when he gives out the result, let him play the philosopher to some purpose, and let him not be a babbler in the land. Are we to suppose that the real revolutions of the celestial spheres differ widely from their apparent courses; and that the same great law (namely, an analogous discrepancy between the real and the apparent) does, not rule, and may not be found out in the movements of human thought—that mightier than planetary scheme?

§ 66. It may now be proper, although it is by no