rareness of the occurrence with the mass of mankind, we cannot
regard as a very practical inquiry. We well remember our
disappointment, when, at the usual stage in the college curriculum,
we were promised "metaphysics" and were set to grind in Stewart's
profitless mill, where so few problems of either practical or
theoretical importance are brought to the hopper, and where, in fact,
the object is rather to show how the upper mill-stone revolves upon
the nether, (reflection upon sensation,) and how the grist is
conveyed to the feeder, than to realize actual metaphysical flour.

[Footnote 14: That is, as a discipline of the faculties,--the chief
benefit to be derived from any kind of metaphysical study.]

Locke's reason for repudiating ontology is the alleged impossibility
of arriving at truth in that pursuit,--"of finding satisfaction in
a quiet and sure possession of truths that most concern us, whilst
we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being." [15]
Unfortunately, however, as Kant has shown, the results of nooelogical
inquiry are just as questionable as those of ontology, whilst the
topics on which it is employed are of far inferior moment. If, as
Locke intimates, we can know nothing of being without first
analyzing the understanding, it is equally sure that we can know
nothing of the understanding except in union with and in action on
being. And excepting his own fundamental position concerning the
sensuous origin of our ideas,--to which few, since Kant, will assent,--
there is hardly a theorem, in all the writings of this school, of
prime and vital significance. The school is tartly, but aptly,
characterized by Professor Ferrier: "Would people inquire directly
into the laws of thought and of knowledge by merely looking to
knowledge or to thought itself, without attending to what is known