Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/529

RhPROP. IX.———— that others were generated from within; that one class of our cognition was innate, or original; that another class was factitious, or acquired. Over the theory thus irrationally propounded, Locke obtained an easy victory. Had the controversy been put upon the right footing—had the true question been raised, Is there an innate part and an extraneous part in every one of our cognitions?—and had Locke answered in the negative, and maintained that each of our cognitions embraced only one element—namely, the extraneous, or sensible part,—in that case his position would have been untenable, because it would have been equivalent to the assertion that both factors (inner and outer) were not essential to the formation of all knowledge, and that an idea could subsist with one of its necessary constituents withdrawn. But, as against Des Cartes, Mallebranche, and Leibnitz, who held that some of our ideas are from without, and others from within, his refutation was triumphant. If any one cognition has its origin wholly from without, we may safely generalise that fact, and assert that the whole of our knowledge is due to an external source. The postulation of an internal element is permissible only because the external element by itself (the mere objective) is no cognition at all, but is pure nonsense, just as the postulation of an external element is permissible only because the internal element by itself (the mere subjective, the