Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/543

RhPROP. X.——————— been demonstratively established, it is conceived that people should have now no difficulty in understanding how oneself or the ego must also form a part of everything which really and truly exists, and consequently how the Absolutely Existent should in all cases be the union of the universal and the particular; and further, how Absolute Existence cannot be accorded to the particular—that is, to mere material things—inasmuch as these, by themselves, are the contradictory to all knowledge, and likewise the contradictory to all ignorance; and, therefore, cannot have true Being ascribed to them, unless we are prepared to maintain that the nonsensical, or that which is neither nothing nor anything, is the truly and absolutely existent.

4. It was formerly remarked (Epistemology, Prop. VI., Obs. 10), that the equation or coincidence of the known and the existent is the ultimate conclusion which philosophy has to demonstrate. This demonstration has been supplied, and the conclusion has been reasoned out from the bottom. The universal and the particular (ego and non-ego) in cognition are also in all essential respects the universal and the particular in existence; or, expressed more popularly, the conclusion is that every true and absolute existence is a consciousness-together-with-its-contents, whatever these contents may be. Thus Knowing and Being are shown to be built up out of the same elements;