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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VII.————
Another circumstance which may have caused the neglect of this proposition.announcing it ever felt like a commandment, until its consequences have been seen to be weighty, and its fruits abundant. Here, before us, is a germ which, to the scythe of reason, yields a harvest of inestimable truth. But it seems, at first, to be little better than a barren truism; hence it has been suffered to slumber on, pregnant with unsuspected wealth, and charged with a moral sublimity more dread than "all the dread magnificence of heaven."
The ego is the summum genus of cognition. Ontological generalisation.9. The ego is the known summum genus of cognitions—just as ens is laid down by logic, or rather by a spurious and perfunctory ontology, as the summum genus of things. Viewed even as a generalisation from experience, the ego may very easily be shown to occupy this position. Lay out of view, as much as possible, all the differences which our manifold cognitions present and the ego, or oneself, will remain as their common point of agreement or resemblance. This is generalisation—the ascertainment of the one in the many by leaving out of account, as much as possible, the differences, and attending, as exclusively as may be, to the agreements of things. The epistemological must not be confounded with the ontological generalisation: much mischief has been done by confusing them. We perceive a number of living creatures. Overlooking their differences, and attending to their agreements, we give the name "animal" to the sum of the agreements