James Frederick Ferrier

“ Assuming your philosophy to be true, as I am of course entitled to do, inasmuch as I have supposed your idea of it to be right, you can now breathe into the old systems the breath of your living thoughts, and the old bones will come to life; for in all genuine speculative thinking there is the closest intercommunion, if people would but see it, between the living and the dead. ”

“ It is not by means of a man's ordinary thinking, but by means of his philosophical thinking, that the verification spoken of can be effected. You might carry the old systems home to your ordinary consciousness, you might attempt to infuse your ordinary consciousness into them, you might do this for ever, and you would not obtain one particle of insight either into them or into their grounds. Your popular everyday consciousness will not help you here; you must have established a philosophical consciousness; in other words, you must know what philosophy itself is. ”

“ It is impossible to regard mind and matter as the same, unless we regard change and not-change as the same, or permanence and non-permanence as the same. It is impossible to regard matter as everything, as the whole, unless we hold that change is everything, and that there is no permanence anywhere; it is impossible to regard mind as everything, as the whole, unless we hold that permanence is everything, and that there is no diversity anywhere; but it is impossible to think that there is nothing but change, it is impossible to think that there is nothing but permanence. ”

“ How shall we set about the acquisition of a philosophical as distinguished from a common consciousness? Here, too, I shall merely offer a few hints, for I think that by this time you ought to have formed for yourselves a pretty distinct conception of what philosophy is in its means and in its ends.
3. To obtain a distinct idea of philosophy let us ask, first of all, What is its converse? If we can get hold of the opposite or counter idea, this will help us to grasp the conception we are in quest of. The converse of philosophy is opinion. ”

“ PHILOSOPHY is of course the subject of which the history of philosophy treats. It is obvious, therefore, that before we can reanimate and verify, as proposed, the philosophical systems of the past, we must, first of all, have formed a distinct idea in regard to what philosophy itself is. ”

“ We must hold that there is both change and permanence; in other words, we must hold that there is both matter and mind as the two distinct elements of the universe. These are thoughts which we cannot help thinking, and in this way, and only in this way, do we obtain an intelligible distinction between mind and matter ”

“ Is there at every moment a new observer as well as a new observed? This consideration causes the speculator to pause. No, says he, there is not, there cannot be a new observer for every new thing observed. If there were, no observation, no knowledge, no consciousness, could take place. The speculator sees that, if he, the observer, were changed into a different observer with every change that took place in his perception, that all thoughts, all cognition, all perception, would be rendered impossible and absurd. ”

“ He obtains the idea of change without any difficulty, and to this idea he attaches a word which expresses it; he calls it change: change, change prevails everywhere, that is the order of the day. To this speculator all objects are in a state of change; even those which appear in themselves to be permanent are in this state so far as they are his perceptions, because at any moment they may cease to be his perceptions, and he receives or may receive different impressions. His perceptions are or may be incessantly changing; all his thoughts are or may be incessantly changing. ”

“ It may be that the man who supposes that the mind is immaterial or spiritual is more in the right than the others. But still his judgment is a mere opinion. He might have thought otherwise. It rests on no necessary grounds. It is not a thought which we cannot help thinking. ”

“ One man is of opinion that it is a sort of vapour; another man is of opinion that it is a kind of fire; another man's opinion is that it is a species of attenuated matter different both from vapour and fire; the opinion of a fourth is that it is a material substance, nature unknown; a fifth thinks that it is immaterial, a spiritual substance, nature also unknown, altogether different from matter, and so on. These are all so many different opinions, and in all these, opinions there is not one particle of thinking. ”

“ Well, what you want, I suppose, is this, that I should place distinctly before you one of those necessary and inevitable thoughts which men cannot help thinking, and which scarcely any man has as yet been able to think clearly or in the right way. ”

“ It may appear a paradox, but it is not really one; it is undeniable truth to say this, that Plato and all great philosophers have existed for the purpose of teaching people to think what not one man in a million has as yet succeeded in thinking, but what nevertheless every man necessarily thinks in the very exercise of his powers as an intelligent being. ”

“ You are aware of the doctrine in the Institutes in which the effect of familiarity in deadening our intellectual insight is described and illustrated; also that the first in nature is the last in science. ”