Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/143

RhPROP. III.———— in cognition of the objective and the subjective elements of knowledge, he mistakes and misstates the laws of cognition; and he sees that if he admits that object and subject form the unit or minimum of cognition, he deprives himself of the best or only argument by which he may prove that each of them is a separate unit of existence. This consideration shocks him; and he endeavours to salve the point by admitting that subject and object are inseparable in cognition (this saves the phenomena in so far as the laws of knowledge are concerned), and by denying that they constitute only a single unit of cognition; (this enables him to keep in his hands a valid argument for their duality of existence). But he retains it at a considerable expense—by swallowing a contradiction of his own brewing, which no palliatives will ever enable him, or any one else, to digest. Such, we may be assured, is the secret history of the psychological deliverance on this point. The psychologist has not the firmness to stand to the truth, be the consequences what they may.

13. The common division of the sciences into the two leading categories,—the science of mind and the science of matter,—when regarded as more than a mere verbal, and to a certain extent convenient distinction, is founded on the fallacy contained in this psychological deliverance, and partakes of its