Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/296

286 (which conducts to idealism) or into the other (which conducts to materialism), possesses the gift of genuine speculative insight.

One important result of this view of the question is, that it demolishes for ever that explanation of perception which is founded on the relation of cause and effect. Because it has been shown that the cause, that is, the object, cannot be conceived at all unless the effect, that is, the perception, be already conceived in inseparable union with it. Therefore, when we say that the object is the cause of our perception, we merely say that that which, when thought, becomes one with our perception, is the cause of our perception. In other words, we are guilty of the glaring petitio principii of maintaining that our perceptions of objects are the causes of our perceptions of objects.

Another important result of the new philosophy is the finishing stroke which it gives to the old systems of dogmatic Realism and dogmatic Idealism. The former of these maintains that an outward world exists, independent of our perceptions of it. The latter maintains that no such world exists, and that we are cognisant merely of our own perceptions. But this new doctrine shows that these systems are investigating a problem which cannot possibly be answered either in the affirmative or the negative; not on account of the limited nature of the human faculties, but because the question itself is an irrational and unintelligible one. For if we say, with