Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/497

Rh cannot help thinking, of processes which the mind cannot help performing in the exercise of its intelligent functions; and that is the only correct conception of it which we can form. It is this in its essence, although, as I have said, it may accidentally embrace alien and illegitimate materials. Such, I conceive, is the correct general idea of philosophy, and he who entertains it knows generally what philosophy is. But this idea requires a good deal of explanation, for although a correct idea, it is by no means a clear one as yet. I now take a new step in advance. I proceed to clear up this idea of philosophy.

6. What may occur to you at the outset is this: if philosophy consists of thoughts which a man cannot help thinking, surely it can be no such very difficult pursuit. So you would naturally think, but in thinking so you would be mistaken. The thoughts which we cannot help thinking are precisely those which it is most difficult to lay hold of and bring to light. You are aware of the doctrine in the Institutes in which the effect of familiarity in deadening our intellectual insight is described and illustrated; also that the first in nature is the last in science. I need not therefore at present insist upon that consideration. Suffice it to say, that whatever we are most familiar with we take the least notice of. Hence the thoughts which we cannot help thinking never attract our attention; in our ordinary moods they never rise into distinct consciousness, they are there all the