Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/247

RhPROP. VII.———— more philosophically, as a never-ending redemption of nonsense into sense, and a never-ending relapse of sense into nonsense. (For further particulars, see Prop. X.; also Prop. IV., Obs. 16-22.)

23. Turn now to the other factor of cognition—the ego, or oneself—and contrast the perpetuity in cognition of this element, compared with the inconstancy of matter. This element does not come into and go out of our knowledge, like a rock, a river, or a tree; it is always there, and always the same. This factor knows no flux, is obnoxious to no vicissitude. It is the permanent in all our knowledge, because it never entirely disappears: it is the universal in all our knowledge, because we are in all our knowledge: it is the necessary in all our knowledge, because no cognisance is possible without this cognisance. The contrast between the two elements, in point of fixedness and fluctuation, is manifest and decided.

24. Seventh counter-proposition.—"The ego (or mind) is known as a particular or special cognition, and not as the element common to all cognitions; in other words, our cognition of ourselves is a mere particular cognition, just as our cognitions of material things are mere particular cognitions. Thus we have a number of particular cognitions. One of these is the knowledge of self. This cognition is