Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/195

RhPROP. VI.———— light can be looked for, when all consideration of that which exists is resolutely waived, until that which is known has been determined. Speculation is then on the ascendant.

9. The writings of Plato are eminently characteristic of the second of these crises. In the hands of this philosopher, the discussion respecting the particular and the universal became a mixed research, in which the attempt was made to determine, at one stroke, both what is, and what is known. The existing particular and universal (the former element being the , the latter the  was no longer the sole or perhaps even the main object of inquiry. It was considered along with the known particular and universal; the former element being the , the latter the , or . The two speculations, which, however, were continually interlacing, went on side by side; and the result given out, as may be inferred from a liberal interpretation of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, was that the known and the existent are coincident. The particular and the universal in existence were declared to be, in all essential respects, identical with the particular and universal in cognition.

10. And doubtless this coincidence is the highest truth which Philosophy seeks to establish—is the