Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/239

RhPROP. VII.———— up into the higher unity of oneself, and contemplated by me as my, or by him, whoever the person may be, as his, cognitions. Then only is our cognition concrete—that is, real, actual, completed, and comprehensible. When I gaze upon an oak-tree, the concrete indivisible cognition before me consists of the four following items, none of which are cognitions, but all of which are mere elements of cognition:—first, The highest genus of cognition, myself; secondly, A lower genus of cognition, tree; thirdly, A still lower genus, or rather species, of cognition, oak tree; and, fourthly, The particular specimen. That is the actual inseparable concretion which exists for thought, whatever may be the actual concretion which exists in nature—with that we have nothing to do at present. The Platonic ideas appear to fall short of this—the concrete totality of Knowing. They correct to some extent the contradictory inadvertency of ordinary thinking, which, moving in abstractions, supposes that the abstract particular—some merely particular tree, for instance—is cognisable. It is not more cognisable than the abstract universal, the mere genus "tree," or the mere genus "me." They are only cognisable together. But Plato's theory of ideas does not completely correct this popular delusion. More plainly stated, the popular inadvertency is this: in dealing with external objects, we always apparently know and think of less than we really know and think of. The