Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/283

Rh it. Perhaps, again, in order to show that the objective may be conceived as existing apart from the subjective, you will quote the lines of the poet—

We reply that it may be very true that many a flower is born so to do. We rather admit the fact. But we maintain that, in order to speak of the fact, you must think of it; and in order to think of the fact, you must think of the flower; and in order to think of the flower, and of its blushing unseen, you must think of the seeing of the flower, and of the seeing of its blushing. All of which shows that here, as in every other supposable case, it is impossible to think the objective without thinking the subjective as its inseparable concomitant, which is the only point we are at present endeavouring to establish.

It will not do to say that this light may be something which may exist, outwardly, and independently of all perception of it, though, in consequence of the limitation of our faculties, it may not be possible for us to conceive how, or in what way, its existence is maintained. Reader! put no faith in those who preach to you about the limited nature of the human faculties, and of the things which lie beyond their bounds. For one instance in which this kind of modesty keeps people right in speculative matters, there are a thousand in which it puts them wrong; and the present case is one of those in which it endeavours to prevail upon us to practise a gross