Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/236

208PROP. VII.———— assigning it, however, to any resemblance in the creatures, but only to a resemblance in our cognitions of them. And so on as before—the only difference being (and it is a very important one) that the words expressive of species and genera mark, not the resemblances among things, but the resemblances among cognitions. Thus the word "animal" betokens a point or points in which certain of our cognitions agree. So do the words "man" and "tree." Each of them is the expression of agreement among certain of our cognitions. Again, the word "organic" denotes a still higher generalisation—records a still higher unity among our cognitions. It indicates a point in which our cognitions of trees resemble our cognitions of animals. The word "body" expresses a still higher genus of cognition, for it indicates some feature in which our cognitions of trees, our cognitions of animals, and our cognitions of stones, all resemble one another. These words, and others like them, stand either for species, or lower or higher genera, not of existence, but of cognition. But none of them ever approaches to the universality which is expressed by the word me. For this term indicates a feature of resemblance, not merely among certain of our cognitions, but among the whole of them—the whole of them, possible as well as actual—the whole of them, past, present, and to come. All the other resemblances in our cognitions are, from a higher