Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/201



has long ceased to be considered a valid and practical discipline of life. And why? Simply because she commences by assuming that man, like other natural things, is a passive creature, ready-made to her hand; and thus she catches from her object the same inertness which she attributes to him. But why does philosophy found on the assumption that man is a being who comes before her ready shaped, hewn out of the quarries of nature, fashioned into form, and with all his lineaments made distinct, by other hands than his own? She does so in imitation of the physical sciences; and thus the inert and lifeless character of modern philosophy is ultimately attributable to her having degenerated into the status of a physical science.

But is there no method by which vigour may yet be propelled into the moribund limbs of philosophy;