Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/607

Rh is under the same law as the second. Wheel within wheel, ego within ego, the process continues ad infinitum. The argument which Herbart urges against Fichte's assumption of a subject-object, tells with greater force against Professor Ferrier. Once admit the necessary presence of two selves in consciousness, and we may, with equal reason, maintain the existence of two thousand."

The difficulty raised in this extract seems to be twofold, and therefore it will be best answered by being resolved into two separate objections. First, Mr Mansel seems to be staggered by an apparent contradiction, which my system presents at the very threshold. I affirm that the apprehension of matter per se is a contradiction. How, then, he asks (such, at least, I understand to be the point of this part of his objection), how can I maintain that I apprehend myself-as-apprehending-matter-per-se, when I affirm, in the same breath, that I never do apprehend matter per se? Surely the law which declares that matter per se is never apprehended, is not compatible with the affirmation that I apprehend myself apprehending it. A system which maintains these two positions is surely suicidal. My answer is this: The word apprehend is used in two somewhat different senses. It denotes, in the one place, inchoate, and in the other, completed cognition. Thus, in the sentence "I can apprehend myself-as-apprehending-matter," the word "apprehend" indicates completed