Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/400

372PROP. XX.———— totum, teres atque rotundum. Hence, looked at in its mere verbal character, it cannot with propriety be defined in any other terms than those which have been laid down as its definition.

3. Twentieth Counter-proposition.—"There is no absolute in cognition. Man's faculties are competent to apprehend only the relative; hence the absolute is unknown, and unknowable by us."

4. This counter-proposition is merely a repetition, in another form, of Counter-proposition XVI., and it involves precisely the same contradiction. It is subverted by the demonstration of the present proposition, just as Counter-proposition XVI. was overthrown by the demonstration of its corresponding proposition. Such notices of the controversy respecting the absolute and the relative as may be deemed necessary will come in more appropriately under the next article, which is virtually identical with Proposition XVII. No apology, however, seems to be required for its introduction; for, as has been said, new verbal forms of error require to be corrected by new verbal forms of truth, if the hydra-heads of falsehood are to be crushed and the work of speculation done effectually and completely.