Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/509

RhPROP. IX.———— by which it has been beset at every stage, we have but to trace this assumption into its consequences.

3. The attribution of absolute existence to material things leads at once to the inference, that matter operates as a cause in the production of our cognitions. And accordingly, when the question as to the origin of knowledge arose, this was the solution proposed—an explanation which finds expression in the following counter-proposition. Ninth Counter-proposition: "Matter is the cause of our perceptive cognitions; in other words, our knowledge of material things is an effect proceeding from, and brought about by, material things." This opinion is the first consequence which flows from the assumption referred to.

4. This consequence may seem harmless enough; the next is more serious. If our knowledge, or perception, of material things be an effect produced by material things, this knowledge (the effect) must be all that we truly apprehend: the material things themselves (the cause) must elude or transcend our observation. The position is, that matter is not itself our knowledge, or any part of our knowledge, but is merely the cause of our knowledge, the originator of our perceptions: hence the perceptions alone are the objects of the mind; their cause