Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/444

416PROP. III.———— the supposition that we can be ignorant of that which is absolutely and necessarily unknowable to all intelligence, is as extreme a violation of the law of contradiction as it is possible to conceive. We perceive that a nescience of the contradictory is not ignorance, but is the very essence of intelligence; and that there can be an ignorance only of that which can be known, or, otherwise expressed, of that which is non-contradictory. With this discovery, light breaks into every cranny and recess of our science: the "holy jungle" of metaphysic is laid open to the searching day, and now no obstacle can stop the onward course of speculation.

6. It may be doubtful whether and how far, this proposition has ever been denied. But as it is not improbable that an obscure impression popularly prevails that we are most ignorant of that which cannot be known, the following counter-proposition is appended. Third Counter-proposition: "We can be ignorant of what cannot possibly be known—indeed, that of which there can be no knowledge, is precisely that of which there must be the profoundest ignorance." If any such doctrine as this is, or ever was, entertained, it is conceived that it cannot hold its ground before the present proposition and its demonstration.