Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/509

Rh the terms of the compromise, a difficulty on which I shall not touch at present, further than by saying that in connection with this solution the question arises, Which of the two constituents, the mental or the material, is the more important and essential to the process? Some inquirers will make the one set of elements the more essential, others will make the other set of elements the more essential. The one contribution or the other will be regarded as of preponderant or exclusive, or overwhelming importance; and thus we are again brought to the two alternatives spoken of, and are led either to adopt the doctrine which represents innate ideas as the essential groundwork of our knowledge, or we adopt the other doctrine, that our sensations, induced by external causes, are the basis and origin of our cognitions. At any rate, in order to simplify the discussion, I leave out of account at present that third or middle alternative, which aims at conciliating the two solutions, and I confine my remarks to the two extreme answers on which I have touched.

5. I go on, then, to speak of the psychology of innate ideas, and of the ethics to which this system gives rise. This system contends that there are cognitions, or (at least) elements of cognition in the mind prior to its intercourse with external things, and that these mental elements are far more essential to our completed knowledge of objects than aught that is supplied to us by these objects themselves; that