Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/119

RhPROP. I.———— first proposition, its subsequent conclusions are legitimately reached, as will appear in the sequel. Supposing it to start from the admission of our first proposition, its illogical procedure would be altogether unparalleled. In justice, therefore, to our common psychology, we must suppose that it is rounded on our first counter-proposition, which, however, is the embodiment of a contradictory inadvertency of thought, by which all its subsequent proceedings are rendered untrue. The divarication of the two systems—our popular psychology on the one hand, founded on this counter-proposition, and exhibiting the erroneous results of ordinary thinking; and our strict metaphysics on the other hand, based on Proposition I., and presenting the results of the pure speculative reason—will begin to grow apparent in our second proposition.

15. To mark strongly the opposition between the propositions and the counter-propositions, it may be stated that the propositions declare what we do think, the counter-propositions declare what we think we think, but do not think: in other words, the propositions represent our real thinking, the counter-propositions our apparent thinking. For example, the first counter-proposition affirms that we can know things without knowing ourselves; but we only apparently do this—we only think that we know them without obeying the condition