Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/151

RhPROP. IV.———— things only, and not them together with something else (to wit, ourselves), which we neither see nor hear, and on which we cannot lay our hands.

4. In such cases the oversight which we commit is not real and total; it is only partial and apparent, and it is to be explained on the principles already expounded under Proposition I.,—the law of familiarity,—and the circumstance that the me, though always a part, is never a sensible part of the object of our knowledge. However strongly the natural judgments of mankind may run in favour of the fourth counter-proposition, it is utterly incompatible with the necessary dictates of reason, which declare that an intelligent soul can never know anything except an intelligent soul apprehending whatever it apprehends.

5. Although here, as in the preceding instances, psychology speaks its opinion somewhat ambiguously and reservedly as to our knowledge of matter per se, still there can be little doubt that its doctrine to a large extent, and in so far as it presents a logical aspect, is virtually coincident with this fourth counter-proposition. Our ordinary psychology advocates the existence of matter per se. And on what ground? Surely on the ground that we know it to exist per se. The knowledge of its independent existence would undoubtedly be sufficient