Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/108

80PROP. I.———— times known, and in which all our cognitions, however diverse they may be in other respects, are known as uniting and agreeing; and besides the ego, or oneself, there is no other identical quality in our cognitions—as any one may convince himself upon reflection. He will find that he cannot lay his finger upon anything except himself, and say—This article of cognition I must know along with whatever I know.

2. The apprehension of oneself by oneself is the most general and essential circumstance on which knowledge depends, because, unless this law be complied with, no intellectual apprehension of any kind is possible; and wherever it is complied with, some kind of knowledge is necessary. Each of the subsequent propositions (with the exception of the last of the epistemology) gives expression to a necessary law of knowledge; but this first proposition lays down the fundamental necessity to which all intelligence is subject in the acquisition of knowledge. It states the primary canon in the code of reason from which all the other necessary laws are derivations.

3. The condition of knowledge here set forth is not an operation which is performed once for all, and then dispensed with, while we proceed to the cognition of other things. Neither is it an operation which is ever entirely intermitted, even when our