Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/289

RhPROP. X.———— correction and subversion which they receive from Prop. X.) has only resulted in "confusion worse confounded."

5. This counter-proposition is erroneous and contradictory, not only because it affirms that all our knowledge is merely sensible, but because it affirms that any of it is merely sensible. It affirms that the whole of our cognitions are due to the senses solely. No doubt that position is false and contradictory; but it is equally false and contradictory, if we suppose it merely to mean that some of our cognitions are due to the senses solely. Because (by Prop. I.) it has been settled that every one of our cognitions must contain and present an element (to wit, the me) which (by Prop. VIII.) cannot come through the senses. So that to whatever extent the counter-proposition is adopted, it is equally contradictory: it is contradictory if taken in all its latitude; it is just as contradictory if taken in a more restricted sense.

6. The scholastic brocard, which has been adopted as the tenth counter-proposition, is the fundamental article in the creed of that school of philosophers who are called "the sensualists"—no insinuation being implied in this designation, that they are more addicted to carnal indulgences than their opponents; but the term being used simply to signify