Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/419

RhPROP. XXII.———— is fixed as the necessary condition of all knowing—while the senses are fixed merely as the contingent conditions of some, i.e. of our, knowing.

7. This analysis might be carried out at much greater length by contrasting the present with the twenty-one preceding propositions; and by showing that while each of the latter expresses a law binding upon all intelligence, the former expresses merely certain laws which are binding upon our intelligence. But it is conceived that the reader's own penetration may enable him to make this comparison for himself, and to perceive that, without a compliance with the laws laid down in the previous propositions, no knowledge of any kind is possible: whereas, without a compliance with the conditions laid down in the present proposition, knowledge might very well take place, although it would be of a different character from that which we now possess. Knowledge might take place notwithstanding this non-compliance, because no contradiction is involved in the supposition that there should be an intelligent apprehension of things under other conditions than our five senses; but a contradiction is involved in the supposition that any kind of cognition should arise under a reversal of the laws specified in the twenty-one preceding propositions—all of which, as was