Page:(1856) Scottish Philosophy—The Old and the New.pdf/53

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the old and the new.
53

be known, these two things must constitute the minimum of knowledge, whatever they may do in regard to existence. He admits that both subject and object are required to make up a datum of cognition; that anything less than the two is not knowable, and yet, that the two together are not the minimum scibile, or knowable least! He continues,—"we will not allow that matter per se or ego per se, is unknowable, but only that each is unknowable per se while each must be known as existing per se." In a foot-note, he says, "Ego per se, and non-ego per se, means either of these out of relation to the other;" so that his last sentence must read thus, We will not allow that matter out of relation to the ego, or the ego out of relation to matter, is unknowable; but only that each is unknowable out of relation to the other!

From these extracts, it is obvious that this critic has adopted as the principle of his psychology, my third counter-proposition in the form in which it is expressed in the Institutes (prop. III., obs. 11), "object and subject, though inseparable in cognition, are, nevertheless, two separate units or minima of knowledge, and not merely one." I add at that place, "it is quite unnecessary to argue against this proposition, so portentous is the twofold contradiction it involves." The contradiction is twofold, because it is contradictory to assert that subject and object are separable in cognition (or that the one can be known without the other being known); but it is doubly contradictory to assert that they are not separable in cognition, and are yet two units of cognition. It is satisfactory to know that this counter-proposition still finds advocates, for this proves that it has always had, although ambiguously, a place in psychology, and that my counter-propositions are not, as Mr Fraser asserts, the mere creatures of my own imagination.

It is further quite evident, from another passage in his review (p. 143), that this writer interprets Sir William Hamilton as having; adopted my third counter-proposition, in the form to which expression is given in the extract just quoted from the Institutes. This must shut the mouths of those who have affirmed that Sir William never, even ambiguously, taught any such doctrine.

To sum up these remarks: it is evident that my reviewer has