Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/556

Its negative character is to be attended to prinicapally.4. This question will be best answered if we take a survey of the system rather in its negative or polemical, than in its positive or constructive, character. The object of philosophy is twofold—to correct error, and to establish truth. Hence, either aim may be made the more prominent. In propounding the system, it was right to lay most stress on the positive establishment of truth, and to be more solicitous about building up the propositions than about overthrowing the counter-propositions. But now, in reviewing the system, it will be proper to reverse this order, and to attend more to the errors which the system corrects than to the truths which it substantiates. The counter-propositions shall now be made to take the lead,—those set forth in the epistemology being, of course, the first to be surveyed.

The first step which the system takes in its negative or polemical character.5. Looking at the system from this point of view, the reader will remark that the first step which the Institutes take, is the ascertainment of the subjects or topics in reference to which natural thinking and psychology are at fault These general topics are—first, Knowing and the Known; secondly, Ignorance; and, thirdly, Being. These themes are all-comprehensive: every truth and every error which any intellect can harbour, must find a place under one or other of these heads; and these, accordingly, are the departments into which phi-