Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/577

Rh the quantity or amount, and not one which referred merely to the quality or nature of knowledge and truth. They have thought that unless all knowledge was ours, a knowledge of "the absolute" could not be ours; in short, that a claim to a knowledge of "the absolute" was a claim to the possession of omniscience. This is a great misapprehension. "The absolute" has nothing to do with the extent, but only with the constitution of cognition. Wherever knowledge or thought is, even in its narrowest manifestation, there "the absolute" is known; because there something is apprehended by intellect simply, something which is intelligible, not merely to this or to that particular mind, but to reason universally. In any review of the question of "the absolute," our philosophers would do well to bear in mind, that not the range or compass, but only the nature or character of our thought has to be taken into account. That there are very serious difficulties to be contended with in establishing "a philosophy of the absolute" is not to be doubted, and it must also be admitted that the tendency of such a philosophy is towards the conclusion (whether satisfactory or not) that rational self-consciousness is the only ultimate and all-comprehensive reality—is the truth above all truth—is the primary groundwork as well as the crowning perfection of the universe. But this conclusion can neither be established nor gainsaid by any inquiry into the limitations of the human faculties. It can only be disposed of (whether