PROP. III.————
Everything which I, or any intelligence, can apprehend, is steeped primordially in me; and it ever retains, and ever must retain, the flavour of that original impregnation. Whether the object be what we call a thing or what we call a thought it is equally impossible for any effort of thinking to grasp it as an intelligible thing or as an intelligible thought, when placed out of all connection with the ego. This is a necessary truth of all reason—an inviolable law of all knowledge—and we must just take it as we find it.
No opinion offered as to existence.19. It is to be observed that under this article no opinion is expressed as to whether the subject and object of knowledge are two separate units of existence. All that is at present affirmed is, that they are not two units, but only one unit, of cognition. To offer any opinion on the subject of Being, in that department of our science which treats merely of Knowing, would be as irrelevant as to start an anatomical doctrine when expounding the principles of astronomy. Let us find out what we can know, and cannot know, before we talk of what is, or is not. In the two next propositions; the absolutely unknowable is more particularly condescended upon.
