Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/77

Rh general question, "What is knowing and the known?"—or more shortly, "What is knowledge?" The ontology cannot be approached, or even looked at, until this division has been thoroughly explicated.

§ 56. These, then, are the two main branches of our science. It is dear that we cannot declare what is—in other words, cannot get a footing on ontology until we have ascertained what is known—in other words, until we have exhausted all the details of a thorough and systematic epistemology. It may be doubtful whether we can get a footing on ontology even then. But, at any rate, we cannot pass to the problem of absolute existence, except through the portals of the solution to the problem of knowledge. Because we are scarcely in a position to say what is, unless we have at least attempted to know what is; and we are certainly not in a position to know what is, until we have thoroughly examined and resolved the question—What is the meaning of to know? What is knowledge? What is knowing and the known? Until these questions be answered, it is vain and futile to say that absolute existence is that which is known.

§ 57. But even after the questions of the epistemology have been resolved—even after all the laws of knowledge have been explored and laid out—are we in a whit better position to take up and answer the