Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/427

RhPROP. XXII.———— weak points in Berkeley's system are these three: first, he missed, though only by a hairsbreadth, the reduction of matter per se to a contradiction—an achievement which, until it be effected, speculation can accomplish nothing; secondly, in consequence of his neglect to distinguish the necessary from the contingent laws of knowledge, he failed to show that the supreme mind which the compulsory reason forced him to place in union with the universe, was not necessarily subject to our sensible modes of apprehension; and thirdly, he was hampered at every turn, as all philosophers have hitherto been, by the want of an agnoiology, or systematic doctrine of ignorance. In other respects, and viewed as approximations to the truth, the speculations of this philosopher, whether we consider the beauty and clearness of his style, or the depth of his insight, have done better service to the cause of metaphysical science than the lucubrations of all other modern thinkers put together.

15. The main result of the epistemology has been already touched upon under this proposition in Observation 9. But a more expanded statement of this result will form no inappropriate termination to the first section of these Institutes. The main result of the epistemology is this: In answer to the question, What is knowledge or Knowing? It replies that all Knowing is the apprehension of