Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/75

first or proximate question of philosophy. The immediate answer which moves away this question, and so causes the whole structure to turn on its pivot, is this: Truth is—what is. Whatever absolutely is, is true. There can be no doubt about that. This answer instantly raises the question, But what is? That question can, at present, receive no answer except an evasive one. Its turn has not yet come. It must "bide its time.'? It must be turned away from us, or, like a mask, it must be taken off and laid aside. But its announcement proclaims and fixes one great section of philosophy—the division which has for its object the problem, what is true being—absolute existence? This branch of the science is usually and rightly denominated Ontology (λόγος τῶν ὄντων—the science of that which truly is).

It must be made to revolve away from us, in order to bring round the epistemology, which, though it naturally comes last, is truly first in order.§ 66. The preliminary business of philosophy is, as has been said, so to turn round her whole array of questions as to make the first last, and the last first; and this she can accomplish only by finding such answers as may serve to send the questions away from her without, in any degree, resolving them. Their solution can commence only when the whole revolution is effected, and when that which naturally comes last has been made to come first, and conversely; because the questions which are made to come first contain all the elements necessary to the