Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/200

172PROP. VI.———— distinction between them, or mistake the one for the other. When the chemist (to illustrate this matter) analyzes certain substances—salts, for example—into elements, finds a common base on the one hand, and certain specific differences on the other, we should fall into a serious error were we to suppose that each of the elements was a kind of salt; just as we should fall into an equal error if, on his dividing salts into kinds or classes, we were to suppose that each of the classes was a mere element of salt. When the logician, in the terms of the hackneyed definition, analyzes human beings into "organised and rational," our mistake would be considerable, were we to understand his statement as a division of human beings into kinds; for, in that case, we should conceive one class of men to be organised, but not rational, and another class to be rational, but not organised. The division must be accepted as a resolution of human nature into its essential constituents—to wit, bodily organisation and reason. Again, when human beings are divided into male and female, this is a separation of them into kinds; to mistake it for an analysis of mankind into elements would lead to very awkward misapprehensions.

16. So in regard to the analysis of cognition and of existence. It is one thing to say that all cognitions and all existences contain both a universal