Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/596

568 of object-plus-subject: this is a relation of independency, and it can be conceived as such, which the other relation cannot, without a contradiction.

It is quite true that I resolve Absolute Existence into a relation, a relation of two contradictories; that is, of two constituents, neither of which is conceivable out of relation to the other. In other words, mind, together with something (whatever it may be, for this I never undertake to settle) which is not mind so strictly as mind itself is mind; this, with me, as I have already said, is alone Absolute Existence. This is what absolutely and truly exists. It is always a concrete and not an abstract. It is only of things out of relation to divine or infinite knowledge that I predicate contradiction, and these cannot properly be called things, but only surds or nonsensicals.

If it is asked, "Why, since finite intelligence begins in time to redeem the universe from contradiction, may not this be the whole rescue?" I answer, simply because we are prevented, by a necessity of thinking, from conceiving it to be the whole rescue. "We cannot suppose a time when time itself, and everything else, was in a condition of absolute nonsense, and therefore we must suppose something more than finite intelligence to rescue the universe from contradiction; and this is, and can be, nothing else than an infinite and all-ruling mind. Again, to the question," Or is it demonstrated