Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/333

RhPROP. XII.———— representing what we formerly beheld, we are as much compelled by the necessary laws of reason to cogitate or represent ourself in its antecedent connection with these scenes, as we were in the first instance compelled by the necessary laws of reason to apprehend this self when the objects were actually before us. And we are thus compelled; because this apprehension of self was in the first instance essential to the constitution of the cognition, and therefore the thought of this antecedent apprehension of self is absolutely necessary to the constitution of the representation. If it were impossible to know one thing without knowing two things, it would be impossible to represent one thing without representing two things; because, unless this were so, less would be representable than could be known; in other words, that would be representable which could not be known. But this contradicts Proposition XI., and is therefore a false and contradictory supposition. And the conclusion is, that we cannot think or represent to the mind our antecedent knowledge or experience of material things without thinking or representing the "me" by which they were, in the first instance, apprehended, and which was itself necessarily apprehended along with them.

7. Twelfth Counter-proposition.—"Matter and its qualities per se are not absolutely incogitable; they admit of being conceived or represented in thought,