Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/133

78 is true for all minds, than in what is true for some minds; and admit further, that number is true for all minds, and that material things are not true for all minds (but only for minds with senses); and what more is required to prove that truth and reality are rather to be found in number than in material things? The whole confusion and misapprehension with which the Pythagorean and Platonic, and many other systems, have at all times been overlaid, have their origin in an oversight as to the kind of truth which philosophy aims at apprehending. Philosophers themselves have seldom or never explained the nature of the end which they had in view, even when they were most intently bent on its attainment. Hence they seem to run themselves into absurdities, and hence their readers are bewildered or repelled. But let it be borne in mind that the end which philosophy pursues is the truth as it exists for intellect universal, and not for intellect particular—for intellect unmodified, and not for intellect modified—for intellect whether with senses like ours, or with senses totally different; and the apparent paradoxes of the Pythagorean and other ancient philosophies will be changed generally into articles of intelligible belief, and will stand out for the most part as grand and unquestionable verities, at any rate, as nearer approximations to absolute truth than anything which the mere senses can place before us.