Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/215

RhPROP. VI.———— Conceptualism cannot be permitted to take any advantage from this shallow evasion, in which a doctrine is advanced altogether inconsistent with the principle from which she starts. It is to be remembered that this scheme divides our cognitions not into elements of cognition, but into cognitions—not into distinct factors, but into distinct kinds, of knowledge—a particular kind, called sometimes intuitions; and a universal, or general kind, called usually conceptions. This is proved by the consideration that in the estimation of conceptualism our particular cognitions precede the formation of our general conceptions, which they could not do unless they were distinct and completed. The question, therefore, is not, Does the mind know or think of the universal along with the particular—the genus along with the singulars which compose it—the resemblance of things along with the things in which the resemblance subsists? In a word, the question is not, Is the conception always and only entertained along with the intuitions? Conceptualism cannot clear herself by raising that question, and answering it in the affirmative; for such an answer would be equivalent to the admission that the general cognitions (the conceptions) are not a kind of cognition, are not themselves cognitions, but are mere elements of cognition. But conceptualism is debarred from that plea by the position which she has taken up at the outset. She is