against Professor Ferrier. Once admit the necessary presence of two selves in consciousness, and we may, with equal reason, maintain the existence of two thousand."
The difficulty raised in this extract seems to be twofold, and, therefore, it will be best answered by being resolved into two separate objections. First, Mr Mansel seems to be staggered by an apparent contradiction, which my system presents at the very threshold. I affirm, that the apprehension of matter per se is a contradiction. How, then, he asks (such, at least, I understand to be the point of this part of his objection), how can I maintain that I apprehend myself-as-apprehending-matter-per-se, when I affirm, in the same breath, that I never do apprehend matter per se? Surely the law which declares that matter per se is never apprehended, is not compatible with the affirmation that I apprehend myself apprehending it. A system which maintains these two positions is surely suicidal. My answer is this:—The word apprehend is used in two somewhat different senses. It denotes, in the one place, inchoate, and, in the other, completed cognition. Thus, in the sentence "I can only apprehend myself—as-apprehending-matter." The word "apprehend" indicates completed apprehension, while the word "apprehending" signifies only inchoate or inceptive apprehension—in other words, apprehension which is not apprehension until supplemented by the apprehension of myself as well as of the thing. A closed or completed cognition is alone a cognition, and yet a half or uncompleted cognition is, in a manner, cognition. This explanation may be sufficient to obviate the first part of Mr Mansel's objection. The process of cognition (according to my system) may be shortly stated in this formula. I apprehend (intelligently, and as an intelligible or completed object,) me—apprehending (sensibly, unintelligently, and as an unintelligible or nonsensical, or uncompleted object) matter per se. The two together, subject and object, alone constitute the completed and presentable datum which is before me. The ambiguity in the twofold use of the word apprehend is, perhaps, not sufficiently explained in the Institutes. But the doctrine which involves this twofold use is fully unfolded under proposition X. of the Epistomology.
