Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/603

Rh having shown that the argument founded upon them has no deleterious effect, either on the preliminary postulate, or first proposition of the Institutes.

A few remarks in explanation of this postulate will not be out of place in this exposition. It may be that the assumption on which my system proceeds, is not explained or enforced so fully as it might have been in the Institutes. The reader will find some remarks in the introduction (§ 66, 67), which only require to be amplified to bear out the assumption. It is possible, however, that it may have been set forth too much in the form of a mere postulate. The following observations may help to render it more convincing.

When the words "Knowing" and "Being" are used in any application whatever, their meaning must have some analogy—however remote and imperfect—to the meaning which they bear in all their other applications. They cannot be used in any one case without signifying, to some extent and in some sense, what they signify when used in any other case. Thus, when we say, that the Supreme Being knows and exists, we must mean by these words something analogous (however small and imperfectly understood the analogy may be) to what we mean when we employ the same words in reference to ourselves, or in any other relation. Language would have no meaning unless this were admitted. It would be, senseless to employ the words knowledge