Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/442

432 about perception resolves it into a mere gymnastic of the mind." Good sir, do you know what you are saying? Do you think that the mind itself is anything except a mere gymnastic of the mind? If you do, you are most deplorably mistaken. Most assuredly the mind only is what the mind does. The existence of thought is the exercise of thought. Now if this be true, there is the strongest possible reason for treating the problem after a purely speculative fashion. The problem and its desired solution, these are only the means which enable a new species of thinking (and that the very highest), viz., speculative thinking, to deploy into existence. This deployment is the end. But how can this end be attained if we check the speculative evolution in its first movements, by throwing ourselves into the arms of the apparently Common Sense convictions of Dr Reid? We use the word "apparently," because, in reference to this problem, the apparently Common Sense convictions of Dr Reid are not the really Common Sense convictions of mankind. These latter can only be got at through the severest discipline of speculation.

Our final answer, then, to the question which led us into this digression is this: It is quite true that the material world exists; it is quite true that we believe in this existence, and always act in conformity with our faith. Whole books may be written in confirmation of these truths. They may be published and paraded in a manner which apparently