Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/163

RhPROP. IV.———— contradictory." True, if it can be known by any intelligence. But what if it can not be known by any intelligence, actual or possible? In that case it undoubtedly becomes the contradictory. For what is a contradiction but that which cannot be known or conceived on any terms by any possible intelligence? Whatever is of this character is a contradictory thing. Why is a two-sided triangle a contradiction? Just because the laws of all thinking prevent such a figure from being known or conceived. Why is matter per se a contradiction? For precisely the same reason. The laws of all thinking intercept it on the way to cognition, and compel something else to be known in its place; to wit, matter cum alio, i.e., mecum. That the one of these contradictions should appear more palpable than the other, is a mere accident of words. Matter per se is thus cut off from all means of escape from the category of the contradictory, inasmuch as a loophole is to be found only in the supposition that, if one kind of intelligence cannot be cognisant of it, another kind may. Psychology endeavours to open that outlet: our first proposition shuts it; so that matter per se must just submit to the doom which consigns it to the limbo of the contradictory.

17. Perhaps it may be thought that the contradiction here spoken of does not attach to matter per se, but only to our knowledge of it; and that it amounts