Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/354

326PROP. XV.———— cause—namely, to the peculiar structure of our faculties, which is supposed to debar us from any better species of knowledge; whereas the truth is, that our incompetency to apprehend each of these things otherwise than as phenomenal, lies in the necessary and universal structure of reason, considered simply as such; for intelligence, of whatever order it may be, must apprehend merely as phenomenal that which it can apprehend only in union with something else—this being the very definition of phenomenon, that it is that which can be known only along with something else. Therefore, to bring out fully the error involved in the counter-proposition, it must be expressed in the following terms, stated as briefly as possible:—

2. Fifteenth counter-proposition.—"Objects, material or otherwise—thoughts or mental states whatsoever—the ego, or mind—all these are the phenomenal in cognition, not because each of them can be known only as part of a completed synthesis, but because our faculties are limited to the comprehension of mere phenomena, and can hold no converse with the substantial."

3. This counter-proposition is not only erroneous; it is contradictory. It contradicts the only conception of phenomenon which it is possible to form, and to which expression has been given in the