Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/211

RhPROP. VI.———— interest; but it seems to contain nothing but what a plain man may very readily concede. Whether it be really intelligible or not, it is, at any rate, apparently intelligible.

24. But what kind of existences correspond to the universal cognitions? That was the puzzle. If the analysis of cognition be a division into kinds, and if the particular cognitions are distinct from the universal, and have their appropriate objects—to wit, particular things—the universal cognitions must, of course, be distinct from the particular, and must have their appropriate objects. What, then, are these objects? What is the nature and manner of their existence? What beings are there in rerum naturâ corresponding to the universal cognitions—to such cognitions as are expressed by the words "man," or "animal," or "tree"? Whatever difficulties the right interpretation of the Platonic doctrine might have given rise to, considerable excitement would have been avoided by its adoption, because by this inevitable question, which the other interpretation would have obviated, the philosophers of a later day, and in particular the schoolmen, were driven nearly frantic with vexation and despair.

25. Those who, to their misunderstanding of Plato, united a reverence for his name, and for what they conceived to be his opinion; maintained that the