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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. I.————
fied: in other words, we think, or rather think that we think, a contradiction; for it is impossible really to think a contradiction. The proposition states what we really think and know as the condition of all our knowledge.
Prop. I. has some affinity to Pythagorean doctrine of numbers.16. This first proposition expresses the principal law by which the unintelligible is converted into the intelligible. Let self be apprehended, and everything becomes (potentially) apprehensible or intelligible: let self be unapprehended, and everything remains necessarily inapprehensible or unintelligible. Considered under this point of view, the nearest approach made to this proposition in ancient times was probably the Pythagorean speculation respecting number as the ground of all conceivability. In nature, per se, there is neither unity nor plurality—nothing is one thing, and nothing is many things; because there cannot be one thing unless by a mental synthesis of many things or parts; and there cannot be many things or parts unless each of them is one thing: in other words, in nature, per se, there is nothing but absolute inconceivability. If she can place before us "thing," she cannot place before us a or one thing. So said Pythagoras. According to him, it is intelligence alone which contributes a to "thing"—gives unity, not certainly to plurality (for to suppose plurality is to suppose unity already given), but to that which is neither one nor many;