Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/270

242PROP. IX.———— these parts by itself, or prescinded from the other part (Proposition VI.) Therefore there can be no knowledge of the ego, or self, or mind, per se, or in a purely indeterminate state, or separated from all things, and divested of all thoughts. It can know itself only in some particular state, or in union with some non-ego; that is, with some element contradistinguished from itself.

1. Just as Proposition I. declares that the mind can be cognisant of something else only when it knows itself so this proposition affirms that it can know itself only when it is cognisant of something else. This statement may appear to give rise to several objections and difficulties which must be obviated and explained.

2. First, In laying down the cognisance of something different from self as the condition of the mind's self-consciousness, does not this proposition appear to introduce a new primary condition of knowledge, in addition to that which was announced in Proposition I. as the one fundamental law? If the mind must know itself, as Proposition I. declares, in order to know anything else; and if, conversely, it must know something else in order to know itself (as this proposition imports), must not