Page:James Frederick Ferrier.djvu/100

96 feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge?'

The first condition of knowledge is that we should know ourselves, and reason gives certainty to this proposition which is not capable of demonstration, owing to its being itself the starting-point; the counter-proposition, asserting the separate subject and object of knowledge, and the mutual presence of the two without intelligence's being necessarily cognisant of itself, represents general opinion, and the ordinary view of popular psychology. Knowledge, then, Ferrier goes on, always has the self as an essential part of it; it is knowledge-in-union-with-whatever-it-apprehends. The objective part of the object of knowledge, though distinguishable, is not really separable from the subjective or ego; both constitute the unit of knowledge—an utterance thoroughly Hegelian in its character, however Ferrier may disclaim a connection with Hegel's system. In space they may be separated, but not in cognition, and this idealism does not for one moment deny the existence of 'external' things, but only says they can have no meaning if out of relation to those which are 'internal'; as Hegel might have put it, they could be known as separable by means of 'abstraction' only. From this point we are led on to the next statement, and a most important statement it is, that matter per se is of necessity absolutely unknowable; or to what Ferrier calls the Theory of Ignorance. Whether or not this theory can make good the title to originality which its author claims for it, there is no doubt that its statement in clear language, such as no one can fail to understand, marks an important era in English speculation. There are, Ferrier says, two sorts of so-called ignorance: one of these is incidental to some minds, but not to all