Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/272

262 shape. The very understanding of it will alter it from what it was. It will not be annihilated—it will not be violently supplanted—but it will be gradually transformed; and this transformation will be seen to arise out of the very nature of thought, out of the very exercise of reason upon the question. It will be granted that, before a question can become a question, it must first of all be conceived. Therefore, before the question respecting the intercourse between mind and matter can be asked, it must be thought. Now, the whole drift of our coming argument is to show that this question, in the very thinking of it, necessarily passes into a new question. And then, perhaps, the difficulty of answering this new question will be found to be not very great

This consideration may, perhaps, conciliate forbearance at the outset of our inquiry at least. Any objections levelled against the question as it now stands, would evidently be premature. For the present question is but the mask of another question; and unless it be known what that other question is, why should its shell be thrown aside as an unprofitable husk? Reader! spare the chrysalis for the sake of the living butterfly which perhaps may yet spring from its folds. The transformation we are going to attempt to describe, forms the most vital crisis in the whole history of speculation.

It must be kept in mind that our perception of an external universe is a phenomenon of a profounder and more vital character than is generally supposed.