Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/453

RhPROP. V.———— that the postulation in question is contradictory. It stands opposed to the primary law of all knowledge, as expressed in the first proposition of the epistemology, which declares that all cognition of material or other things per se is impossible, inasmuch as every intelligence (actual or possible) which apprehends material things, must apprehend itself along with them; in other words, must apprehend them, not per se, but cum alio. Hence the conclusion now under discussion is contradictory, because it is founded on an assumption which is contradictory: and thus the counter-proposition which contends for our ignorance of matter per se, or of the universe as it exists by and in itself, is annihilated by the artillery of necessary truth.

10. From these remarks it is obvious that Kant and other philosophers have fallen into the mistake of supposing that we could be ignorant of material things per se through an inattention to the causes which render them absolutely unknowable. They supposed that they were simply unknowable by us on account of the limitation or imperfection of our faculties of cognition, but that they were still possibly knowable by intelligences competent to know them. In the course of this work, however, it has been repeatedly shown that our incompetency to know matter per se is due to no such cause, but is attributable to the essential