PROP. XVI.————
out anything else being known or thought of along with it. But logs of wood or brickbats cannot be thus known or thought of (as will appear from Prop. XVII., if it is not already evident to the Nader); and therefore the assertion which declares that these, and such things, are known substance, is false and contradictory. But still, in so far as the present proposition is concerned, it encounters no opposition from popular opinion; and therefore to this extent our natural modes of thought are neither inadvertent nor erroneous. To find the exact counter-proposition which Proposition XVI. subverts, we must look to the deliverances of psychology.
Sixteenth counter-proposition.5. Sixteenth Counter-proposition.—"There is," says psychology, "no substantial in cognition; we are not competent to know or to form any conception of substance." Psychology then adds, somewhat inconsistently, that substance is to be conceived as the occult substratum of manifest qualities, the unknown support of known accidents. But inasmuch as we are not considering at present what the nature of substance is, but only the state of the fact as to our knowledge of it, all remarks on this latter part of the psychological doctrine must be reserved for a subsequent occasion (see Prop. XVII., Obs. 8, 9, 10.)
6. This counter-proposition contradicts reason, because it advances a doctrine which, if true, would