Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/342

314PROP. XIII.———— XI.; which misapprehension, however, will be completely obviated if the reader will attend to the two restrictions of thought laid down among the observations on that proposition. Representation can, first, do anything except add to the data of cognition, an element of which no type or instance has been given, or can be given, in experience; and, secondly, it can do anything except leave out an element essential to the constitution of original cognition. But here thought is doing neither of these things. Having apprehended myself along with all that I apprehend, I am furnished with a pattern or instance, according to which I can cogitate another, or any number of other, selves doing the same; and having supplied in thought, by the supposed presence of another "me" to the universe, the element essential to its cognition, I am leaving out no ingredient essential to the formation of knowledge. And thus each individual ego, without running into a contradiction, obtains in thought a universe absolutely independent of its individual self. This kind of independent universe each of us can believe to subsist in his absence without harbouring a contradiction; but we cherish a contradiction the instant we attempt to believe in any other kind of independent universe as subsisting in our absence.

6. The reason why the universe per se is absolutely unthinkable, is because neither we nor any