Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/203

RhPROP. VI.———— and some existences were merely particular, and that others were merely universal. Whether this denial is a true doctrine in so far as existence is concerned, must be reserved for subsequent consideration; that question cannot be touched upon in the epistemology. But it is certainly a true doctrine in so far as knowledge is concerned, and as such it is advanced and advocated in this sixth proposition. In justice, therefore, to Plato—for every philosopher is entitled to the best construction which can be put upon his opinions—we are bound to hold that his analysis of cognition and of existence was intended as a resolution of these into their elements: and being this, it was equivalent to a denial that these elements were kinds of cognition or kinds of existence. If a man maintains that every drop of water is composed of the two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, he virtually denies that hydrogen, by itself, is a kind of water, and that oxygen, by itself, is a kind of water. So if a man affirms that every existence consists of two elements, and that every cognition consists of two elements, he virtually denies that either of the elements, by itself, is a kind of existence or a kind of cognition. This position, affirmative and negative, we believe Plato to have occupied.

18. But various obstacles prevented this doctrine from being accepted, or even understood. The main