Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/439

RhPROP. II.———— every form of ignorance is of such a character that it may possibly be removed; and that if certain kinds of ignorance are incident to certain orders of the intelligence, they are not, of necessity, incident to other orders of intelligence. The subsequent movements of the system do not require that more than this should be proved. Neither does this proposition prove that all human ignorance is possibly remediable. It only proves that what man or any other intelligence may happen to be ignorant of, need not, of necessity, be unknown to all other intelligences (supposing that other intelligences exist). In other words, it merely proves that whatever any intelligence is ignorant of, may nevertheless be known—known actually if an intelligence exists competent to know it,—and known potentially even although no such intelligence should exist. Unless this were true, all ignorance would not be possibly remediable; and if all ignorance were not possibly remediable, some kind of knowledge would be inconsistent with the nature of all intelligence—in which case, ignorance would be no defect, because a defect is always the privation of some quality or attribute which is consistent with the nature of the being who is deprived of it.

2. Second Counter-proposition.—In this case, too, the counter-proposition is wanting; but its place is thus marked for the reason already assigned.