Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/320

310 which gave rise to the systems, on the one hand, of subjective idealism, with all its hampering absurdities; and, on the other hand, of hypothetical realism, with all its unwarrantable and unsatisfying conclusions.

To return to our question. It seems certain, then, that the question, Would matter exist if man were annihilated? cannot be intelligibly asked, when we consider it as answered in the affirmative, because it is clear that its terms cannot be complied with. Conceiving the universe to remain entire, we cannot conceive ourselves as abstracted or removed from its sphere. We think ourselves back, in the very moment in which we think ourselves away.

But, in the second place, suppose that we attempt to answer the question in the negative, and to maintain that the material universe would no longer exist if we and all percipient beings were annihilated; how will this hypothetical conclusion help us out of the difficulty which hampers the very enunciation of the problem? We are aware that this is the favourite conclusion of idealism as commonly understood, and it is a conclusion not altogether uncountenanced by the reasonings of Berkeley himself. But still the form of idealism which espouses any such conclusion is unguarded and shortsighted in the extreme. The ampler and more wary system refuses to have anything to do with it; for this system sees that, when the question is attempted to be answered in the negative, the conditions of its statement are not