Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/434

406PROP. I.———— and to obviate any complaint to which the subsequent propositions might be exposed on the ground that their data of proof had been left doubtful or unexpressed.

2. There have been many inquiries into the nature of knowledge: there has been no inquiry into the nature of ignorance. This section of the science has positively no forerunner; it is an entire novelty in philosophy—a circumstance which is mentioned merely to account for the fewness and brevity of the accompanying annotations. The agnoiology makes its way through a comparatively unencumbered field. There is something to pull down and something to build up; but the work both of demolition and of construction is much simpler than it was in the epistemology.

3. This research, however, is indispensable. It is impossible to pass to the third section of the science except through the portals of this inquiry. For, suppose we were at once to carry forward the result of the epistemology into the ontology, and in answer to the question, What truly and absolutely is? were to reply, Objects plus a subject, the ego with some thing or thought present to it—this, and this alone, is what truly and absolutely is,—we should be instantly stopped by the rejoinder that this synthesis is, at best, merely the known absolute,