Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/578

550 can be ignorant of, it follows that thing-or-things-plus-(another)-me is what alone we can be ignorant of. (The nature of the synthesis indicated by the plus cannot here be touched upon.)

But what becomes of "thing minus me," "object by itself," "matter per se;" Kant's "Ding an sich"? "It is," says Kant, "that of which we are ignorant." Nay, that is precisely the point where he and all other philosophers have gone astray, have stumbled and broken their noses. It is not that which we are ignorant of, because it is not that which can possibly be known by any intelligence on any terms. To know thing per se or sine me, is as impossible and contradictory as it is to know two straight lines enclosing a space : because mind by its very law and nature must know the thing cum alio, i. e., along with itself knowing it. Therefore it is just as impossible for us to be ignorant of matter per se, thing minus me, Ding an sich, as it is impossible for us to know this.

The difference, you perceive, between this and every other system is, that while every other system refers our nescience of matter per se to a defect or limitation in our cognitive faculties, and thus represents us as ignorant of matter per se in the proper sense of the word ignorant, this system refers our nescience of matter per se to the very nature of constitution of all reason, refers it to a necessary law which is the very perfection and essence of all intelligence,