Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/144

116PROP. III.———— fallaciousness. Indeed, to lay down the dualism of subject and object as complete and absolute, (that is, as an out-and-out duality which is not also a unity), which psychology not unfrequently does, is to extinguish every glimmering of the scientific reason; for this implies that the dualism is laid down in cognition, as complete and absolute, which it can only be when intelligence can act in opposition to its own necessary and insuperable laws. In case it should be thought that psychology is rather unsparingly dealt with throughout this work, it may be here observed that it is only in so far as psychology ventures to treat of the fundamental question in regard to knowledge, and to intrude into the region of the prima philosophia, that her procedure is reprehended, and her insufficiency exposed. Within her own proper sphere—the investigation, namely, of such mental operations as memory, association of ideas, &c.—the performances of psychology are by no means to be slighted.

14. It comes very much to the same thing whether the ordinary psychological deliverance be identical with the opinion propounded in paragraph 11, or with the less illogical doctrine set forth in the third counter-proposition. The invalidity of the latter has been already sufficiently exposed. It cannot possibly be established, except upon the overthrow of Proposition I. A few remarks may be offered, not