Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/558

530 § 28). This contradiction, which is largely countenanced, if not formally ratified, by psychology, is the parent, proximately or remotely, of all the other contradictions which are corrected in the course of the system. It is embodied in Counter-proposition I., and subverted by the corresponding proposition—the fundamental article of the Institutes. The subject must not only know, but must be known along with, all that comes before it. This single principle reforms the whole character of human thought. Its affirmation is the groundwork of all the truths which the system subsequently advances: its denial is the mother of all the errors which the system subsequently over-throws.

8. The contradictory inadvertency in regard to the primary law of knowledge leads directly to a contradictory inadvertency in regard to the object of knowledge. This latter contradiction obtains expression in the second counter-proposition, which asserts that objects can be known without a subject or self being known along with them. Proposition II., which is an immediate offshoot from Proposition I., corrects this error, and replaces it by a necessary truth of reason.

9. The next contradiction which the system corrects is the supposition that the unit or minimum