Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/492

thing to the practical development of the student's intellectual life. I have said that truth, strictly speaking, is intelligible only when deduced from principles, and presented, in a rigorously reasoned form. I say this more particularly in regard to metaphysical truth. I limit my assertion to the truth with which philosophy has to deal; and while I maintain that the regeneration of metaphysical science can be expected only from the importation of demonstration into its processes, I affirm, likewise, that its hitherto unsatisfactory characters, its impotent condition, and the disrepute into which it has fallen, are in a large measure attributable to the unreasoned form, the unsystematic procedure which it has adopted. On this latter topic, the unsettled state of metaphysics, I now propose to say a few words, with an eye to the conclusion that a better condition of things can be looked for only when Reason and the light and the force of pure thinking have been brought to bear more vigorously and perseveringly than has ever yet been done in the cultivation of this science.