Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/471

RhPROP. VIII.———— ignorant of the contradictory,—an opinion which every one who reflects upon its absurdity will be inclined forthwith to abandon. Hence it is submitted that these Institutes are more humble in their pretensions, and acknowledge more fully the extent of man's ignorance, than any of those systems which lay claim ostentatiously to the virtue of humility, and talk about the infinite particulars which lie beyond our cognisance, without considering very critically what they are saying.

10. Eighth Counter-proposition.—"The object of all ignorance, whatever it may be, need not be more than what is usually regarded as the object. It need not be the synthesis of the particular and the universal; but it may be, and it is, mere particular things by themselves. It need not consist of a subjective and an objective element—but it may consist of the objective element merely, or of the subjective element merely; in other words, a subject without any object, or objects without any subject, may be the object of our ignorance."

11. To give stability to this counter-proposition, either of two points would require to be made good,—either, first, that objects without any subject or self can be known, and that self or the subject without any object can be known; or, secondly, that there can be an ignorance of what cannot possibly