Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/116

88PROP. I.———— must be established as a necessary truth of reason—as a law binding on intelligence universally—as a conception, the opposite of which is a contradiction and an absurdity. Strictly speaking, the proposition cannot be demonstrated, because, being itself the absolute starting-point, it cannot be deduced from any antecedent data; but it may be explained in such a way as to leave no doubt as to its axiomatic character. It claims all the stringency of a geometrical axiom, and its claims, it is conceived, are irresistible. If it were possible for an intelligence to receive knowledge at any one time without knowing that it was his knowledge, it would be possible for him to do this at all times. So that an intelligent being might be endowed with knowledge without once, during the whole term of his existence, knowing that he possessed it. Is there not a contradiction involved in that supposition? But if that supposition be a contradiction, it is equally contradictory to suppose that an intelligence can be conscious of his knowledge, at any single moment, without being conscious of it as his. A man has knowledge, and is cognisant of perceptions only when he brings them home to himself. If he were not aware that they were his, he could not be aware of them at all. Can I know without knowing that it is I who know? No, truly. But if a man, in knowing anything, must always know that he knows it, he must always be self-conscious. And therefore