Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/131

RhPROP. II.———— general with regard to the object of knowledge; it is, moreover, the exponent of the popular psychological doctrine on this point. In the science of the human mind, subject and object are not contrasted as two things, both of which are known, and must be known together; they are not laid down as two things which, in their synthesis, constitute the only object which any intelligence can apprehend. They are contrasted simply as that which knows, and as that which is known—the former being the subject, and the latter the object. This is the second step in the procedure of our ordinary psychology. Just as, in its first position, it agrees with common thinking in overlooking the condition of all knowledge, and starts from the doctrine set forth in the first counter-proposition; so in its second position it also coincides with common opinion in overlooking a part of the object of knowledge, and in representing a mere part as the whole of that object. Here, again, however, its teaching is ambiguous. Our ordinary psychology does not expressly affirm that the object can be known without the subject or self being known; but by laying all its emphasis on the consideration, that in the constitution of knowledge the subject is the factor which knows, while the object is the factor which is known, it virtually teaches that doctrine. At any rate, our subsequent articles will make it plain that the psychology now in vogue virtually embraces the second