Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/221

RhPROP. VI.———— was incompetent to create or to contemplate them—in short, that, considered by themselves, they were mere sounds or signs without any sense. And, finally, nominalism, having accomplished this good work, is struck down, and gives up the ghost, under the battery of this sixth proposition. Whether the particular things, the independent existence of which is assumed by nominalism, do really so exist or not, is a point on which the epistemology offers no opinion. But it declares unequivocally that the particular cognitions which are held to correspond to these particular things have no existence in the mind. They have no footing there, even as abstractions. For this sixth proposition has proved that no intelligence is competent to harbour either a particular cognition or a universal cognition—inasmuch as it has proved that every cognition is a synthesis of these two factors, and must present both a particular and a universal constituent. Those, however who may think otherwise, will find satisfaction in the counter-proposition which states, it is believed with perfect fairness, the ordinary opinion.

32. It is worthy of remark, in conclusion, that the errors of philosophy have continually deepened in proportion as its character and tendencies have waxed more and more psychological. The science of the human mind, as it is called, has done incalculable mischief to the cause of speculative truth. The