CONTENTS.
vii
64. | Remarks obviating any objections to the system, on the ground that its conclusions cannot at all times be present to the mind, | 54 |
65. | Continuation of these remarks, | 56 |
66. | Remark obviating any objection to this system on the score of presumption, | 58 |
67. | The indispensable extension of the necessary laws to all reason, | 59 |
68. | An objection to the system on the score of inconsistency obviated, | 60 |
69. | Objection retorted. The confusion of philosophers in regard to the conceivable and the inconceivable, | 61 |
70. | This confusion illustrated, | 62 |
71. | All other systems make game of the laws of thought, | 63 |
72. | The inconsistency of philosophers inextricable, | 64 |
73. | Their laws of thought always turn out, at best, to be mere laws of imagination, | 65 |
74. | This system does not make game of the laws of thought, | 66 |
75. | It abridges the grounds of controversy, | 66 |
76. | Conclusion of introduction explaining how the starting-point of philosophy is reached (§§ 76-85), | 67 |
77. | How the starting-point is reached, | 67 |
78. | Plato, in Theætetus, fails to reach the starting-point, | 68 |
79. | Search for the starting-point, | 69 |
80. | Why the question—What is knowledge? cannot be the starting-point, | 71 |
81. | This question resolved into two questions, | 72 |
82. | Which of them is our question,—and the first in philosophy, | 72 |
83. | That philosophy has a starting-point proved by the fact that its starting-point has been found, | 73 |
84. | Starting-point must state the essential of knowledge. Experience may confirm, but reason alone can establish its truth, | 74 |
85. | Re-statement of the first or proximate question of philosophy, | 74 |
86. | Its answer is the absolute starting-point, and forms the first proposition of these Institutes, | 75 |
SECTION I. | ||
THE EPISTEMOLOGY, OR THEORY OF KNOWING. | ||
PROPOSITION I. | ||
The Primary Law or Condition of All Knowledge, | 79 | |
Observations and Explanations, | 79 | |
1. | Prop. I. answers the first question of philosophy, | 79 |
2. | It expresses the most general and essential law of all knowledge, | 80 |
3. | It declares that self-consciousness is never entirely suspended when the mind knows anything, | 81 |
4. | Objection that self-consciousness seems at times to be extinct, | 81 |
5. | Objection obviated. Proposition explained, | 81 |
6. | Our apparent inattention to self accounted for by the principle of familiarity, | 82
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