Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/321

Rh one whit more faithfully discharged than they were when a reply was supposed to be given to it in the affirmative. For let us try the point. Let us say that, man being annihilated, there would no longer be any external universe; that is to say, that there would be universal colourlessness, universal silence, universal impalpability, universal tastelessness, and so forth. But universal colourlessness, universal silence, universal impalpability, universal tastelessness, and so forth, are just as much phenomena requiring, in thought, the presence of an ideal percipient endowed with sight and hearing and taste and touch, as their more positive opposites were phenomena requiring such a percipient. Non-existence itself is a phenomenon requiring a percipient present to apprehend it, just as much as existence is. No external world is no more no external world without an ideal percipient, than an external world is an external world without an ideal percipient. Therefore, in saying that there would be no external world if man were annihilated, we involve ourselves in precisely the same incapacity of rationally enunciating the question as we did in the former case. We are compelled to bring back in thought our very percipient selves, whom we declared we had conceived of as annihilated. In neither case can we adhere to the terms of the question; in neither case can we construe it intelligibly to our own minds; and therefore the question is unanswerable, not because it cannot be answered, but because it cannot be asked.