Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/53

xlvi philosophy, after taking an empirical startingpoint in Bacon, and being carried on farther in the same direction by Locke, is recently making an effort to take into itself the a priori and idealistic element of knowledge. Assuredly this tendency to unite the idealistic element with realism is so interesting and important a phenomenon, that we have every reason to take special notice of it in reviewing this work. The author endeavours throughout to raise himself above the antitheses in which abstract thought so easily becomes entangled, especially that of realism and idealism, and to grasp firmly their unity. . . . He is entirely in the right when he repels the charge that the law of cognition laid down by him is a one-sided or subjective-idealistic principle. He maintains that it never occurred to genuine idealism to deny that things really exist externally to ourselves. Idealism, he avers, not denying this, asks only what is meant by external, apart from all relation to an internal; and he proves that without this relation the word external has and can have no meaning." After a more detailed examination of the work, the reviewer states his aim to have been "to show that what I regard as the genuine fundamental idea of recent German philosophy is now opening a path for itself among our kinsmen the English; and I hope that the differences which I have expressed from the honoured author, if this notice meets his eye, will be regarded in the true light in which they seek to be regarded,