Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/86

58 means pleasant, to make a remark or two on the tone in which this work may appear to be conceived and executed. It may seem to adopt a somewhat presumptuous line of exposition in undertaking to lay down the laws, not only of our thinking and knowing, but of all possible thinking and knowing. This charge is answered simply by the remark that it would be still more presumptuous to exclude any possible thinking, any possible knowing, any possible intelligence, from the operation of these laws—for the laws here referred to are necessary truths—their opposites involve contradictions, and, therefore, the supposition that any intelligence can be exempt from them is simply nonsense; and, in so far, as senselessness is a sin, this supposition is sinful. It supposes that Reason can be Unreason, that wisdom can be madness, that sense can be nonsense, that cosmos can be chaos. This system escapes that sin. It is, therefore, less presumptuous, and more becoming in its moral spirit than those hypocritical inquiries which, by way of exalting the highest of all reason, hold that this may be emancipated from the necessary laws of all thinking, and that these laws should be laid down as binding, not universally, but only on human intelligence.