Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/246

218PROP. VII.———— fixed as having a necessary place or an absolute perpetuity in cognition. Not one of them is for ever before us, therefore not one of them is the permanent in cognition: not one of them is everywhere before us, therefore not one of them is the universal in cognition: not one of them is incapable of being removed from our cognisance, therefore not one of them is the necessary in cognition. And thus the whole material universe is shown without difficulty to be the fluctuating (or non-permanent), the particular (or non-universal), the contingent (or non-necessary), element of knowledge. And thus far, at least, the doctrine advocated by the older systems is both tenable and true. Viewed ontologically, the inchoation and incessant flux ascribed to matter may be an enigma to the student; but viewed epistemologically, it need not puzzle him at all.

22. Even viewed ontologically, it need not puzzle him much after all that has been said. If every completed object of cognition must consist of object plus the subject, the object without the subject must be incompleted—that is, inchoate—that is, no possible object of knowledge at all. This is the distressing predicament to which matter per se is reduced by the tactics of speculation; and this predicament is described not unaptly by calling it a flux—or as we have depicted it elsewhere, perhaps