Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/490

480 the means by which the mind is disciplined. And hence philosophy, a philosophy which would overtake both of these ends, as all philosophy should, and which would at once fill and discipline the mind, must be a scheme of systematised truth. And as system is merely another name for reason, it is thus the duty of all speculative philosophy—of that discipline whose business it is to fulfil the highest demands of education, and to teach the student that hardest of all lessons both to teach and to learn, namely, how to think—it is the, duty of this science to be from first to last a consistent scheme of methodised and reasoned knowledge.

7. There is an old Greek saying, , that is, much learning or multifarious knowledge does not truly educate the intellect. What more is required? This additional element is required, that our knowledge be reduced to system; that it be strictly methodised. If knowledge is the light of the soul, system is the light of knowledge. Indeed, it is not going too far to affirm that truth is intelligible—intelligible to its possessor—only in so far as it is amenable to the forms of reason; and it is certain that he can make it intelligible to others only in proportion to the success with which he can evolve it in an unbroken series out of the principles from which it springs. So far is truth from being repugnant to logic, I hold that this is the vesture in which she most delights to clothe herself. She