Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/315

RhPROP. X.———— 27. It must be confessed, however, that Kant is sometimes very nearly right. All that he wanted was a firm grasp of the principle, which he seems at times to have got hold of, namely, that the senses supplied no cognitions, but mere elements of cognition. This principle necessarily fixes the sensible elements of cognition as contradictory—as data not to be known on any terms by any intelligence when placed out of relation to the me, the other complemental element of all cognition. Here, however, Kant would have been hampered by the fetters of his own system; for, indulging in an unwarrantable hypothesis, he denies the strict universality and necessity of any intellectual law, (that is, its necessity and universality in relation to intelligence, considered simply as intelligence). So that he could scarcely have profited by the principle referred to, even if he had adhered to it with unflinching consistency, which he certainly does not. He falls just as often, perhaps oftener, over into the counter-statement, that the sensible intuitions are not mere elements, but are a kind of cognition. In fact, it is evident that the misinterpretation of the Platonic analysis, in which elements were mistaken for kinds, and which, as we have seen, (see Prop. VI.), has played such havoc in philosophy generally, has carried its direful influence even into the psychological museum of Kant, and exhibits its fatal presence in all his elaborate preparations.