Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/142

114PROP. III.———— apprehending himself. Hence he sees no difficulty whatever in separating it intelligently from himself. Hence, too, he fancies that it is a unit of knowledge, and that he is another unit of knowledge. This supposition, which contradicts the necessary laws of all reason, is no worse than an inadvertency on the part of common opinion, although it is one of the most inveterate of those natural oversights which metaphysic exists for the sole purpose of correcting.

11. As usual, the psychological teaching on this head is more ambiguous and more erroneous than the popular inadvertency. It certainly does not embrace Proposition III., and in so far as it dissents from the counter-proposition, it dissents only to fall into a deeper error. It sometimes embraces a middle alternative, in which the contradiction already involved in the third counter-proposition is complicated with an additional contradiction: something to this effect—object and subject, though inseparable in cognition, are nevertheless two separate units or minima of cognition, and not merely one! It is quite unnecessary to argue against this proposition, so portentous is the twofold contradiction it involves. But it may be worth while to point out its origin.

12. The psychologist finds himself in a dilemma. He sees that if he expressly denies the inseparability