Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/117

RhPROP. I.———— reason establishes our first proposition as a necessary truth—as an axiom, the denial of which involves a contradiction, or is, in plain words, nonsense.

12. Every metaphysical truth is faced by an opposite error which has its origin in ordinary thinking, and which it is the business of speculation to supplant. It will conduce, therefore, to the elucidation of our first proposition, if, following the plan laid down in the Introduction (§ 47), we place alongside of it the counter-proposition which it is designed to overthrow. First counter-proposition: "To constitute knowledge, all that is required is that there should be something to be known, and an intelligence to know it, and that the two should be present to each other. It is not necessary that this intelligence should be cognisant of itself at the same time."

13. This counter-proposition gives expression to the condition of knowledge, as laid down by ordinary thinking; and, it may be added, as laid down by our whole popular psychology. To constitute knowledge, there must be a subject or mind to know, and an object or thing to be known: let the two, subject and object (as they are frequently called, and as we shall frequently call them), be brought together, and knowledge is the result. This is the whole amount both of the common opinion