Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/71

contrast with the errors to be relinquished, has been the cause, for the most part, of the unintelligibility of all previous speculations. Why are the Platonic "ideas" generally unintelligible? Simply because Plato has not told us distinctly, and because no one, knows exactly, what natural opinion this doctrine was advanced to controvert. Why is the unica substantia of Spinoza, still without a meaning? For precisely the same reason. We do not exactly know what popular delusion it stands opposed to. Why are the "monads" of Leibnitz, and the "pre-established harmony" of the same philosopher, still without a key, or provided only with one which will not fit the wards of the lock? Just because he has not shown us distinctly what inadvertencies of common thought these doctrines were designed to take the place of. Why is Hegel impenetrable, almost throughout, as a mountain of adamant? Because he has nowhere set before us and explained the prevalent errors which, for aught we know to the contrary, he may, like a gigantic boa-constrictor, be crushing within his folds. He may be breaking every bone in their body in his stringent circumvolutions, but we do not know that; for he treats us to no observations bearing directly, or even bearing remotely, on the natural opinions which his doctrines are, no doubt, in some obscure and unexplained fashion of their own, intended to subvert. This negligence, or omission, confirms the truth of