Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/463

RhPROP. VIII.———— the subject per se is equally contradictory with object per se. It cannot be known on any terms by any intelligence; and, therefore, unless we entertain the absurd supposition that we can be ignorant of the contradictory, we cannot be ignorant of the subject, or ego, or mind, per se. Again, let the object of our ignorance be fixed as nothing. But who was ever so foolish as to maintain that we were ignorant of nothing? By the very terms of the research, in which our ignorance is admitted, we confess ourselves to be ignorant of something. And therefore, since this something cannot be things by themselves, or the non-ego per se, and cannot be the mind by itself, or the ego per se, and moreover cannot be nothing, it must be the synthesis of things and some mind—the non-ego plus some ego—in short, some-object-plus-some-subject. If any other alternative is left which the object of our ignorance may be, this system will be glad to learn what that alternative is.

3. It is scarcely credible that, at this time of day, any philosophical opinion should be absolutely original, or that any philosophical truth, of which no previous hint exists in any quarter, should now, for the first time, be brought to light. Nevertheless, the doctrine now under consideration is believed to be altogether new. If it is not so, the present writer will be ready to surrender it to any prior