Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/209

RhPROP. VI.———— this doctrine has been inherited by psychology from a source much older than herself; and that this source can be no other than the misinterpretation which has been just laid to the charge of philosophers—and the truth of which allegation is now clearly established by these considerations. Had the Platonic analysis been rightly understood, and its true meaning been widely disseminated at first, no such doctrine as that embodied in the counter-proposition could ever have obtained an ascendancy, or even found a place, in philosophy.

22. Before touching on the controversies to which allusion has been made, it may be well to review our position. The Platonic analysis of knowledge and existence into the particular and the universal admits of two interpretations. The particular and the universal may be either elements or kinds; and if they are the one, they cannot be the other. These two interpretations, being directly opposed to each other, open up two separate lines for speculation to move along. The one line which issues from the right interpretation—that, namely, which declares that the particular and the universal are mere elements—has never yet been followed out,—scarcely even entered upon. Philosophy has travelled almost entirely on the other line, which proceeds from the wrong interpretation—that, namely, which holds that the particular and the universal are kinds of cognition and