Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/406

378PROP. XXI.———— confusion, from neither party knowing, or at least explaining, whether absolute cognition was the result of ordinary or of scientific thinking.

5. The truth is, that all men are equally cognisant of the absolute. Those who disavow this knowledge do, and must, entertain it, just as much as those who lay claim to it. No effort is required to get hold of it. Every man who is cognisant of himself together with the things which come before him, has a knowledge of the absolute; because he apprehends this synthesis as detached and rounded off, and not in necessary association with anything else. It is true that our cognitions are linked together by such inveterate ties of association that it may be difficult, in point of fact, to obtain an absolutely isolated apprehension of oneself and any particular thing. But this is a question which is to be determined by reason, and not by experience. The laws of association are arbitrary and contingent, and their operation must at present be discounted. The question is, What is all that is strictly necessary to constitute a case of absolute and isolated cognition? and the answer is, "Me plus a grain of sand or less," even although, in point of fact, I should not be able to apprehend a grain of sand without taking cognisance, at the same time, of a whole sea-shore. The accidental enlargement of the objective element has no effect in essentially