Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/327

RhPROP. XI.———— ; so that in reality there was no controversy at all between them, or at most a purely verbal one. Intuition may be a better word for its purpose than idea or image: presentation may be more suitable than representation to indicate what is meant. But that is all; and this, therefore, ought now to be distinctly understood, that Dr Reid and his followers, instead of scalping a doctrine, have merely tomahawked a word.

10. The truth contained in the doctrine of representative perception is this, that it is an approximate, though imperfect, enunciation of the necessary law of all reason, which declares that nothing objective can be apprehended unless something subjective be apprehended as well. The errors of this system are traceable to its neglect or inability to eliminate from the subjective contribution in the total perceptive operation, all that is contingent, retaining only so much as is proved to be necessary, and unsusceptible of abstraction, by a reference to the law of contradiction. But the explication of this subject must be reserved for the last proposition of the epistemology, in which the contingent are disengaged from the necessary laws of cognition.