Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/546

518PROP. X.——————— Our five senses are the accidental part of the absolute in our cognition: they are not a necessary part of the Absolute in all cognition, and therefore they are not a necessary part of every absolute existence. Other intelligences may be cognisant of themselves-apprehending-things-in-other-ways-than-we-do. In which case their Absolute, both in cognition and existence, would be different from ours, in its accidentals, but not in its essentials. So that all that the ontology professes to have proved in regard to absolute existence is, that every Absolute Existence must consist of the two terms—ego and non-ego—subject and object—universal and particular; in other words, of a self, and something or other (be it what it may) in union with a self.

8. It was formerly remarked (Epistemology, Prop. X., Obs. 21), that it would be necessary in the ontology to qualify the assertion that "Plato's intelligible world was our sensible world." The foregoing observations may enable the reader to understand to what extent that assertion has to be qualified. Plato's intelligible world is our sensible world, in so far as all the essential elements both of cognition and of existence are concerned; but not in so far as the contingent elements, either of cognition or of existence, are concerned: in other words, Plato's intelligible world is our sensible world to this