Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/508

480PROP. IX.———— origin of our knowledge falls to be discussed, and that the opinions of philosophers respecting it come under review: for this question is ontological, just as the inquiry into the actual character and composition of our cognitions is epistemological. It is of the utmost importance that these inquiries should be kept distinct, and that the nature of our knowledge should be accurately ascertained, before any attempt is made to explain its origin. This order, however, has been reversed: philosophers have treated of the origin of knowledge before they had attained to any definite conception of its nature; they explored the causes of the fact, but the fact itself they left undetermined: and to this reversal of the right method of research are to be attributed all the perplexities and errors in which they got involved in the course of the controversy.

2. The fundamental assumption which has hitherto rendered abortive every attempt to settle this question, is the hypothesis that matter exists, not as an element of cognition, but in an absolute capacity, or irrespective of all intelligence. Whether this assumption be true or not, it was not a position to start from. It is an ontological offshoot from an uncritical and erroneous epistemology. To comprehend the salient points of the controversy respecting the origin of knowledge, and the