Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/579

Rh, terrestrial, and infernal, and thus represents us as not ignorant of matter per se, in any proper and intelligible sense of the word ignorant.

Now for a glimpse of the ontology. No ontology was possible so long as our ignorance of matter per se was admitted. Because in answer to the question, What is real and absolute Being? one man might say, It is that which we know; it is object-plus-subject; it is the universe-mecum. But another man might answer, It is that which we are ignorant of. In which case it would be quite possible for real and absolute Being to be matter per se, this being what, in our present supposition, we are ignorant of; in short, no conclusion but an uncertain or alternative conclusion could be reached, and there is no science in an alternative conclusion. But once exclude matter per se from the pale both of our knowledge and of our ignorance, and an ontology becomes, for the first time, possible. Because in answer to the question, What is real and absolute Being? we must either reply, It is that which we know, in which case it will be object plus subject, because this is the only Knowable; or we must reply, It is that which we are ignorant of, in which case, also, it will be object plus subject; because, it having been proved that we can be ignorant only of the Knowable, and it having also been proved that the only knowable is object plus subject, it follows that the only ignorable (the only thing we can be ignorant of) is Object plus