Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/392

382 limits of himself—of his own consciousness? If he can, then says the querist, the reality of the external world is indeed guaranteed; but what an insoluble, inextricable contradiction is here—that a man should overstep the limits of the very nature which is his, just because he cannot overstep it! And if he cannot, then says the same querist, then is the external universe an empty name—a mere unmeaning sound; and our most inveterate convictions are all dissipated like dreams.

Astute reasoner! the dilemma is very just, and is very formidable; and upon the one or other of its horns has been transfixed every adventurer that has hitherto gone forth on the knight-errantry of speculation. Every man who lays claim to a direct knowledge of something different from himself, perishes impaled on the contradiction involved in the assumption, that consciousness can transcend itself: and every man who disclaims such knowledge, expires in the vacuum of idealism, where nothing grows but the dependent and transitory productions of a delusive and constantly shifting consciousness.

But is there no other way in which the question can be resolved? We think that there is. In the following demonstration, we think that we can vindicate the objective reality of things—(a vindication which, we would remark by the way, is of no value whatever, in so far as that objective reality is concerned, but only as being instrumental to the ascertainment of the laws which regulate the whole