Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/451

RhPROP. V.———— turn up their shadowy sides, and gleaming abdomina. In the former section it was shown that there could be no knowledge of their opposites; in the present section it is shown that there can be no ignorance of their opposites. Thus all those things which we are prevented from knowing by the necessary laws of all reason, are struck down right and left, and are exterminated in their ultimate citadel of refuge—the stronghold, namely, of our ignorance—to which they have always hitherto betaken themselves when expelled from our cognition and conception, (see Prop XI. Epistemology, Obs. 1.) This operation effectually clears the ground, as will be seen in the sequel, for the establishment of a demonstrated and impregnable ontology.

6. It may be proper to explicate this doctrine somewhat more fully, and to point out certain historical circumstances connected with it—the corresponding counter-proposition being first of all subjoined. Fifth Counter-proposition: "We are altogether ignorant of material things out of all relation to a mind, subject, or self; in other word; we are profoundly ignorant of matter per se."

7. Many philosophers have seen that the human mind cannot know things by and in themselves, because it can know them only as modified and supplemented by its own faculties of cognition;