Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/40

may sink within us when we cross the line on the shoreless sea of speculation. At the antipodes the clouds of doubt may settle dark upon our path, and the tempests of despair may cause our fortitude to quail; but, vestigia nulla restrorsum, there is no drawing back for us now. We are embarked on an irrevocable mission; let us press forward then—let us carry through. The intellectual, like the physical world, is a round; and at the moment when the wanderer imagines himself farthest from the house of Humanity, he will find himself at home. He has revolved to the spot of his nativity. He is again surrounded by the old familiar things. But familiarity has been converted into insight; the toils of speculation have made him strong; and the results of speculation have made him wise. He is now privileged to dig up the keys of truth, and to see, and to show to others, the very seeds of reason. He now beholds the great universe of God in the light of a second illumination, which is far purer and far less troubled than the first. Philosophy and common sense are reconciled.

Explanation continued. First principles always come out last.§ 18. The unreasoned and generally unsatisfactory state of philosophy is to be explained by the circumstance, that no inquirer has ever yet got to the beginning; and this, again, is to be accounted for by a fact for which no man is answerable, but which is inherent in the very constitution of things—the