Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/424

396PROP. XXII.———— intelligence who is cognisant of such senses as we possess—in that case the material universe would be reduced to the predicament of a contradiction, if our senses were withdrawn. It would become absolutely unknowable; because, upon this supposition, such senses as ours must necessarily be known along with it. And the only mode in which we could conceive it to subsist as a non-contradictory thing in our absence, would be by thinking it in synthesis with some mind which apprehended it exactly as we apprehend it—namely, by the way of seeing, hearing, touching, &c. But this is a species of anthropomorphical ontology which revolts us, and which we are by no means prepared to accept; and we refuse to accept it, because the conclusion is not logically reached. Reason does not assure us that all knowledge is impossible except under such sensational conditions as we are subject to.

13. Again, if we suppose representationism to adopt the second of these alternatives, and to hold that the ego is not a necessary, but is, like the senses, a mere contingent element of cognition—in other words, that knowledge is possible to an intelligence who is not cognisant of himself; in that case, the material universe would not be reduced to the predicament of a contradiction by the removal therefrom of every intelligent subject. It would still remain a knowable and intelligible thing, because