Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/278

268 be true and faithful representatives of the former alone. They could not but convey a false and perverted information. Thus, man's primary convictions, which taught him that the universe was what it appeared to be, were placed in direct opposition to the conclusions of his reason, which now informed him that it must be something very different from what he took it for.

Thus, in consequence of one fatal and fundamental oversight, the earlier philosophy was involved in inextricable perplexities in its efforts to unravel the mysteries of perception. But we are now approaching times in which this oversight was retrieved, and in which, under the scrutiny of genuine speculation, the whole character and bearings of the question became altered. Its old features were obliterated, and out of the crucible of thought it came forth in a new form, a form which carries its solution on its very front. How has this change been brought about?

We have remarked that all preceding systems were founded on a distinction laid down between objects themselves and our perception of objects. And we have been thus particular in stating this principle, and in enumerating a few of its consequences, because it is by the discovery of a law directly opposed to it that the great thinkers of modern times have revolutionised the whole of philosophy, and escaped the calamitous conclusions into which former systems were precipitated.