Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/290

262PROP. X.———— that, in their estimation, the whole mass of human knowledge is ultimately referable to, and originally derived from, the senses. They sometimes take, and get, credit for being the only philosophers who refer our knowledge wholly to experience. All philosophers, however, whatever school they may belong to, do the same, unless Kant is to be considered as an exception. In distinguishing between our cognitions, according as they come from without, or are originated from within, this philosopher seems to refer the former class only to experience. But this is obviously a very arbitrary and unwarrantable limitation of the term. If the mind has any innate, or native, or a priori, cognitions, these are to be traced to experience (to an experience of their necessity), just as much as its acquired, or a posteriori, knowledge is to be referred to that source. Indeed, it is obvious that all knowledge is itself experience, and that the two terms are merely different names for the same thing. To say that all knowledge comes from experience, is simply to say that all knowledge is knowledge—a tautological truism which admits of no sort of discussion. But to say that all knowledge comes from sensible experience, is to affirm that all knowledge is mere sensible knowledge, and that is a very different position. It is one on which much controversy has been expended. It is exactly the counter-proposition which Proposition X. convicts of contradicting