Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/74

The three sections of this institute. Arrangement explained and proved to be essential, (§§ 54-62)three main sections—an arrangement which will require some explanation, showing not only its general and convenient, but its essential and unarbitrary character. In philosophy, nothing is left to the discretion of an individual thinker. His whole arrangement, every step which he takes, must be necessitated, not chosen. It must be prescribed and enforced by the object itself, not by his way of viewing it. Accordingly, the arrangement now alluded to is one which chooses and fixes itself as the only possible arrangement in its leading features, whatever modifications its details may undergo at the hands of subsequent inquirers. But this matter will require a good deal of elucidation, which is supplied in the following § §, 54-62, in which the general sections of our subject, and their order, are laid out.

The section called ontology naturally comes first,—but is truly last in order§ 54. From what has been already said about the principles or first elements of philosophy being the last to show themselves, it is obvious that this is a science which naturally comes to us end foremost. The difficulty is, so to turn round the whole huge machinery as to get its beginning towards us. But what is the end which comes to us first, but which we must so turn round as to make it revolve away from us, and come to us last? It is this—announced in the form of a question—What is truth? This is in itself the last or ultimate; but to us it is always the