Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/402

374PROP. XXI.————

1. This demonstration might have been drawn out at greater length. Object + subject was shown in Prop. III. to be the minimum scibile per se—that is, the least that can be known by itself, or in an isolated state, or out of relation to anything else, (see Prop. Ill., and in particular Obs. 6); and hence, inasmuch as whatever can be known in an isolated state, or without any correlative, is the known absolute (by Def.), it follows that object + subject is, and must be, the known absolute, and that nothing but this synthesis can be the known absolute, because nothing but this is, or can be, known without any correlative being known along with it. The short demonstration given is, however, quite sufficient for its purpose.

2. Twenty-first Counter-proposition.—"Object-plus-subject, &c.,—this synthesis, thus variously expressed, is not the absolute in cognition; it cannot be known out of relation, or without any correlative being known along with it; because our faculties are not adequate to the comprehension of the absolute, but only to the comprehension of the relative."

3. Much controversy has been expended on the