Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/534

506PROP. IX.———— or in detail, to a mere part or element of cognition. It can be known only along with the other element. The cognition is always the material universe (or a portion of it), plus the mind or person contemplating it. This synthesis is not merely the only known, but the only knowable.

32. Fifthly. Now, a doctrine of intuitive perception can be established on reasonable grounds; now the downfall of representationism is insured. A doctrine of intuitive perception arises, indeed, of its own accord, out of the data which have been laid down. Matter, or the external thing, is just as much the immediate object of a man's mind as he himself is the immediate object of his mind, because it is part and parcel of the total presentation which is before him. Thus the material universe is neither representative of something else, nor is it represented by anything else. It is representative of nothing except itself; and we apprehend it intuitively—the consideration being borne in mind that we always do and must apprehend ourselves along with it.

33. Sixthly. This system steers clear of materialism, or the doctrine which holds that matter has an absolute existence—is an independent and completed entity. The same stroke which reduces matter to a mere element of cognition, reduces matter per se (that is, matter dissociated from the other