Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/568

540 matter cannot be the cause of our cognitions, inasmuch as it is a mere part of our cognitions, as stated in the demonstration of the corrective proposition.

26. The tenth counter-proposition is a mere repetition of counter-propositions VI. VII. VIII. It is introduced because it is the antagonist proposition to Proposition X., which overthrows it, and demonstrates what, and what alone, absolutely exists. It is conceived that the conclusion established by this proposition (a conclusion which is equally infallible, whether absolute existence be that which we know, or that which we are ignorant of)—namely, that minds together with what they apprehend are the only veritable existences, and that minds without any apprehensions, and apprehensions without any mind, are mere absurdities—is so far from being an obnoxious or extravagant conclusion, that it is, on the contrary, in the highest degree consonant with the dictates of an enlightened common-sense, and gratifying to feelings at once sober and exalted.

27. And lastly, the eleventh counter-proposition gives expression to the atheistic conclusion into which ordinary thinking and psychology inevitably fall, after performing their descent through the whole preceding series of contradictions. The counter-propositions hang organically together, and