Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/334

306PROP. XII.———— although it may be true that they cannot be presented in knowledge."

8. This counter-proposition expresses the inadvertency of natural thinking, and also of psychological science which comes up in the place of Counter-propositions IV. and V., when these are subverted by their corresponding propositions. This counter-proposition would rest upon an assured basis if Counter-proposition XI. were sound; because, if less could be thought of than was essential to constitute cognition, there would be nothing to prevent matter per se from being conceived. But Counter-proposition XI. is false, and therefore Counter-proposition XII., which is founded upon it, is false also. The one goes down before Proposition XI., and the other before Proposition XIII, as contradicting the necessary truths of reason.

9. The psychologist sometimes argues that, although matter and its qualities per se cannot be imagined, they may nevertheless be thought of in some loose and indeterminate kind of way. Imagination, he may admit, cannot represent to us the material universe emancipated from all subjective or sensational admixture; but he may contend that pure thinking is competent to perform what knowledge and imagination are unable to overtake. This proposition disposes of that inconsiderate and