Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/547

RhPROP. X.——————— extent, that it is that which must embrace a subjective and an objective factor—an ego and a non-ego—but not to this extent that it is that into whose constitution (whether considered as known or as existent) such senses as ours must of necessity enter. Hence what we term the sensible world is the only intelligible or truly existing world in so far as it consists of ourselves and things, but it is not the only intelligible and truly existing world in so far as the senses are embraced in this synthesis, for these are the contingent and (possibly) variable conditions of the known; and are consequently the contingent and (possibly) variable conditions of the existent. The other terms (ego and non-ego) must co-exist wherever there is either knowledge or existence. Hence it may be truly said that every existence is a co-existence; and that to attempt as all psychology does, to cut down this co-existent into two separate existences (mind and its objects), is to aim at the establishment of contradiction in the place of knowledge, and of nonsense in the place of existence.

9. A word must here be added to explain in what sense, and to what extent, we are cognisant of absolute existence, and in what sense, and to what extent, we are ignorant of the same. Every man is cognisant of absolute existence when he knows—himself and the objects by which he is