Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/216

188PROP. VI.———— bound to show—if she would make good her scheme—that just as the particular cognitions stand distinct from the general cognitions, so the latter stand distinct from the former. The question, therefore, with which conceptualism has to deal is this: does the mind know or think of the universal without thinking of the particular—of the genus, without taking into account any of the singulars which compose it—of the resemblance among things, without looking, either really or ideally, to the things to which the resemblance belongs? In a word, can the conceptions be objects of the mind without the intuitions,—just as, according to conceptualism, the intuitions can be objects of the mind without the conceptions? That is the only question for conceptualism to consider, and to answer in the affirmative, if she can. But it is obvious that it can be answered only in the negative: the mind cannot have any conception of a genus or a species without taking into account some of the particular things which they include. It cannot think of the resemblance of things without thinking of the resembling things. And hence, all genera and all species, and everything which is said to be the object of the mind when it entertains a general conception, are mere words—sounds to which no meaning can be attached, when looked at irrespective of the particulars to which they refer. Thus conceptualism is destroyed. It perishes in consequence of the principle from which it starts—