Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/226

198PROP. VII.———— cognition must embrace a particular and a universal part. What these parts are must also be exhibited; and this, accordingly, is done in the present article. The ego or self is, of necessity, known along with whatever is known; hence it enters into the composition of every cognition, and is the permanent and universal factor of knowledge. Wherever anything at all is known, it is known. Matter, on the other hand, is known as that which enters into the composition of many, perhaps of most, of our cognitions; but inasmuch as reason does not assure us that all knowledge is impossible, except when something (indefinitely) material is apprehended, and assures us still less that all knowledge is impossible, except when something (definitely) material is apprehended—matter is fixed, by that consideration, as the changeable, contingent, and particular part of cognition.

2. Matter is not to be regarded as constituting the whole of the particular element of knowledge. The particular may have many forms besides those which we call material. Matter, therefore, in all its varieties, is only a portion of the phases of the particular. The ego is necessarily identical with the whole of the common and permanent element; because nothing can possibly be conceived, except itself, which an intelligence must always be cognisant of. But matter is not necessarily coextensive with