Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/297

Rh dogmatic Realism, that an outward world does exist independent of our perception of it, this implies that we are able to separate, in thought, external objects and our perceptions of them. But such a separation we have shown to be impossible and inconceivable. And if, on the other hand, we say, with dogmatic Idealism, that an outward world does not exist independent of our perceptions of it, and that we are conscious only of these perceptions, this involves us in exactly the same perplexity. Because to think that there is no outward independent world, is nothing more than to think an outward independent world away, but to think an independent world away, we must first of all think it; but to think an outward independent world at all, is to be able to make the distinction which we have shown it is impossible for us to make, the distinction, namely, between objects and our perceptions of them. Therefore this question touching the reality or non-reality of an external world cannot be answered, not because it is unanswerable, but because it is unaskable.

We now take leave of a subject which we not only have not exhausted, but into the body and soul of which we do not pretend to have entered. We have confined our discussion to the settlement of the preliminaries of one great question. We think, however, that we have indicated the true foundations upon which modern philosophy must build, that we have described the vital crisis in which speculative thought is at present labouring, while old things are