Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/61

Rh all. He talks of the "scheme of materialism" ('Elements,' p. 4), as if the scheme of materialism, supposing that there is one, did not exist, merely because the scheme of immaterialism cannot, as we have seen, bring itself into existence. If the immaterialist cannot (as we have proved he cannot, logically) set up the entity of mind as a habitation for certain houseless phenomena, will he not permit the materialist charitably to give them shelter in the existing entity of matter? Surely this is a stretch of philosophical intolerance, on the part of the immaterialist, not to be endured. He cannot house these phenomena himself, nor will he permit others to house them. Before concluding this note, which has already run too far, we may point out to the logical student another instance of Mr Stewart's vicious logic contained in the paragraph referred to. We will be short "Mind and matter," says he, "considered as objects of human study, are essentially different," that is, are different in their essence. Now turn to the last line of this paragraph, and read: "We are totally ignorant of the essence of either." That is to say, being totally ignorant of the essence of two things, we are yet authorised in saying that these two things are essentially different, or different in their essence. Now, difference being in the opinion of most people the condition of knowledge, or, in other words, our knowledge of a thing being based upon the difference observed between it and other things, and our ignorance of a thing being generally the consequence of its real or apparent identity with other things, it appears to us that our ignorance of the essence of these two things (if it did not altogether disqualify us from speaking) should rather have induced us to say that they were essentially the same; or, at any rate, could never justify us in predicating their essential as Mr Stewart has done. If we know nothing at all about their essence, how can we either affirm or deny anything with respect to that essence? (From all that we have here said, it will not be inferred by any rational thinker that we are a materialist, and just as little that we are an immaterialist. In point of fact we are neither; and if the reader does not understand how this can be, we can only explain it by repeating that we regard the whole question in itself as silly and frivolous in the extreme, and only worthy of notice as marking certain curious windings of thought in the history of logic. a true psychological question; and we do the same. But further than this, we now give, what he never gave or dreamt of giving, the reason why it