Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/366

338PROP. XVII.———— ? psychology is not content with answering that there is no substantial in cognition, and that what is supposed to be such is merely the phenomenal: she goes on to declare what the substantial in existence is; and thus people's attention is called off from the proper and only point under consideration, while the truth, which is not over-willing to be caught at any time, slips quietly away during the confusion. "We first raise a dust," says Berkeley, "and then complain that we cannot see"—a very true remark. The speculative thinker asks a question about knowledge, whereupon the psychologist instantly kicks up a turmoil about existence, so that neither of them can see what they are looking for. The question, What is the substantial in cognition? is no more answered by saying that some occult substratum of qualities is the substantial in existence, than the question, Who is the Great Mogul? is answered by the reply that her Majesty Queen Victoria is the Sovereign of England. We therefore throw overboard, in the mean time, the ontological surplusage contained in the counter-proposition, and limit it to the relevant averment "that object plus a subject is not the substantial, but is the mere phenomenal, in cognition."

4. The contradiction involved in the counter-proposition thus restricted is instantly brought to light by an appeal to the definitions of substance and