Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/88

60 weigh, and would, therefore, be altogether irrelevant. But it maintains that, if there be any other intelligence (either actual or possible) besides man's, that intelligence must conform to the necessary laws, these being the essential conditions and constituents of all intellect and of all thought

§ 68. As a further objection to this system, it may perhaps be urged that the system is guilty of the inconsistency of representing man as capable of conceiving what he cannot conceive. It is guilty of nothing of the kind. The system only represents man as capable of conceiving that many things which are inconceivable by him we, or, at any rate, may be conceived by other and higher intelligences (if such there be, for this is not assumed), and that therefore these things are not to be laid down as absolutely or in themselves inconceivable. Though they we inconceivable by us, they are still to be placed under the category of the conceivable,—a category or general head which, according to this system, has two subdivisions; to wit, first, the conceivable by us, and secondly, the conceivable by some other intelligence (actual or possible), though not conceivable by us. This latter head comprehends what we can conceive to be conceivable, though we cannot directly conceive it. Thus the category of the conceivable is one, though it has two subdivisions. Over against this category, and clearly