Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/543

then to ask himself candidly this question, Whether a knowledge of this distinction be not in his estimation essential to the very existence of the mind which he yet endeavours to suppose in existence previous to the knowledge in question? I hold that a mind which has no knowledge of the distinction between right and wrong, is not a mind at all in any intelligible sense. I hold that it is the knowledge of the distinction which makes the mind, and not the mind which makes the distinction and the knowledge of the distinction. Now this doctrine affords a complete answer to the sceptic's cavils against the immutable truth of moral distinctions. Our mind, says the sceptic, makes the distinction between right and wrong; we have therefore no decisive guarantee for the absolute truth of the distinction; it depends on the existence of our minds. It cannot be shown to have an objective and independent validity. I answer, No; it is, on the contrary, the distinction, God's distinction, between right and wrong which makes our minds, which converts blind instincts into rational aims; the objective validity, the immutable truth of the distinction, is therefore indefeasibly guaranteed. The existence of our minds depends on and follows the existence of the distinction. The existence of the distinction is thus secured as an absolute and invariable, an inflexible truth. It is the prior, the steady, the permanent, and the independent. We are the posterior, the plastic, and the fluctuating. And our fluctuations cease, that is, our