Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/206

178PROP. VI.———— interpretation without adhering to it consistently. The most perplexing cases with which the historian of philosophy has to deal are those in which he finds two mutually contradictory doctrines advocated without any suspicion of their repugnancy, and as if they were little more than two forms of one and the same opinion. It is difficult to deal with a case of this kind, because it may seem unfair to charge a writer with maintaining an opinion when, at the same time, he advances something which directly contradicts it. The only way of coming to a settlement is by taking into account the general tone and scope of his observations, and by giving him credit for the doctrine towards which he appears most to incline. The case before us is one of this description. The discordancy of the two analyses was not perceived by those who speculated in the wake of Plato. Hence, at one time, they may speak of the particular and the universal as if these were mere elements, and, at another time, as if they were kinds of cognition or of existence. But the prevailing tone of their discussions shows that they favoured the latter interpretation. Plato is supposed to have held that there was a lower kind of knowledge (particular cognitions, sensible impressions), which was conversant with a lower class of things—namely, particular existences; and a higher kind of knowledge (universal cognition; general conceptions, ideas), which dealt with a higher order of things—to wit,