Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/122

94PROP. I.———— The theory may be imperfect; but it is one of the profoundest speculations of antiquity. The modern interpretation has emptied it of all significance.

18. The law laid down in Proposition I. is merely a higher generalisation and clearer expression of the Pythagorean law of number. Whatever is to be known must be known as one, or as many, or as both; but whatever is to be known can be made one only by being referred to one self; and whatever is to be known can be made many only when each of the plurals has been made one by being referred to one self; and whatever is to be known can be made both one and many only by the same process being gone through,—that is to say, its unity and its plurality can only be effected by its reduction to the unity of self.

19. Passing over at present all intermediate approximations, we find anticipations of this first proposition in the writings of the philosophers of Germany. It puts in no claim to novelty, however novel may be the uses to which these Institutes apply it. Kant had glimpses of the truth; but his remarks are confused in the extreme in regard to what he calls the unity (analytic and synthetic) of consciousness. This is one of the few places in his works from which no meaning can be extracted.