Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/65

is, of necessary truths of reason—in the place of the oversights of popular opinion and the errors of psychological science." That seems a plain enough statement, and it may serve as an answer to a question by which many people have professed themselves puzzled,—What are metaphysics? This definition is only a more special and explicit re-statement of the definition of philosophy given in § 5. It should be remarked that at every stage of its progress, and ever as its course becomes clearer, the definition of philosophy admits of being laid down in terms more and more definite. Its opening definition is always of necessity the least definite; and the definition now given is not the most definite that the subject admits of. Indeed, it cannot be understood, except in a general way, until the true ideas—the necessary truths of reason, here referred to—have been exhibited; but that can be done only in the Institutes themselves. The present definition, however, may serve to let people know precisely what philosophy or metaphysic proposes—what the instigating motives of speculative inquiry are;—and it may also serve to clear people's heads of the confusing notion that metaphysic is, in some way or other, vaguely convertible with what is called "the science of the human mind," and has got for its object,—nobody knows what,—some hopeless inquiry about "faculties," and all that sort of rubbish. This must all come down,