n, which by his own admission the world already
knew just as well as he did--and which required no labour for their
production. This way of going to work with any problem, is certainly not
the best. These remarks settle, we think, the general pretensions of the
philosophy of Common Sense. In justice, however, to this philosophy, we
must not omit to mention, that Sir William Hamilton has adduced the
evidence of no less than one hundred and six witnesses, whose testimony
goes to establish that it is a [Greek: ktema es aei]--a perpetual
possession, "a _joy_ for ever."

The _first_ and _third_ modes of dealing with our problem remain to be
considered. The first mode ignores the problem altogether, it refuses to
have any thing to do with it. Perhaps this mode is the best of the
three. We will not say that it is not: it is at any rate preferable to
the second. But once admit that philosophy is a legitimate occupation,
and this mode must be set aside, for it is a negation of all philosophy.
Every thing depends upon this admission. But the admission is, we
conceive, a point which has been already, and long ago decided. Men must
and will philosophise. That being the case, the only alternative left
is, that we should discuss the highest problem of philosophy in the
terms of the _third_ mode proposed. We have called this the speculative
method--which means nothing more than that we should expend upon the
investigation the uttermost toil and application of thought; and that we
should estimate the truths which we arrive at, not by the scale of their
importance, but by the scale of their difficulty of attainment,--of
their cost of production. _Labour_, we repeat it, is the standard which
measures the value of truth, as well as the value of wealth.

A still more cogent argument in favour of the strictly speculative
treatment of the problem is this. The problem of perception may be said
to be a _reversed_ problem. What are the means in every other problem,
are in _this_ problem the end--and what is the end in every other
problem, is in this problem the means. In every other problem the
solution of the problem is the end desiderated: the means are the
thinking requisite for its solution. But here the case is inverted. In
_our_ problem the desiderated solution is the means, the end is the
development, or, we should rather say, the creation of speculative
thought--a kind of thought different altogether from ordinary popular
thinking. "Oh