Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/317

Perhaps the reader may here imagine that we are imposing a quibble both on ourselves and him, and that though we may not be able to conceive ourselves ideally removed, yet that we are perfectly able to conceive ourselves actually removed out of the universe, leaving its existence unaltered and entire; but a small degree of reflection may satisfy him that this distinction will not help him in the least. For, what is this universe which the reader, after conceiving himself, as he thinks, actually away from it, has left behind him unmutilated and entire? We ask him to tell us something about it. But when he attempts to do so, he will invariably find the constitution of his nature to be such that, instead of being able to tell us anything about it, he is compelled to revert to a description of his own human perceptions of it, perceptions which, however, ought to be left altogether out of the account; for what he is bound to describe to us is the universe itself, abstracted from all those impressions of it which were supposed to be non-existent. But this is what it is impossible for him to describe. A man declares that if he were annihilated the universe would still exist. But what universe would still exist? The bright, the green, the solid, the sapid, the odoriferous, the extended, and the figured universe would still exist. Certainly it would. But this catalogue comprises the series of your perceptions of the universe, and this is not what we want; this is precisely what you undertook not to give us. In mixing up the