Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/538

510PROP. IX.———— assume as the ground of our explanation, the very thing (knowledge) which that ground had been brought forward to explain.

36. And finally, it must be borne in mind that although all cognition has been characterised by this system as a fusion or synthesis of two contradictories (the ego and non-ego)—that is, of two elements which, out of relation to each other, are necessarily unknowable—this does not mean that the synthesis is brought about by the union of two elements, which existed in a state of separation previous to the formation of the synthesis. The synthesis is the primary or original; the analysis is the secondary or posterior. The contradictory elements are found by an analysis of the synthesis, but the synthesis is not generated by putting together the parts obtained by the analysis, because these parts can be conceived only in relation to each other, or as already put together.