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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VII.————
on experience for its establishment, admits, nevertheless, of being exhibited as a generalisation from experience; and accordingly the ego has been exhibited as such in the foregoing observations, in order that its character may be more clearly understood, and its universality more fully appreciated.
Shortcoming of the Platonic ideas.12. One source of perplexity, in studying the Platonic ideas, is the uncertainty whether they are genera of cognitions or genera of things. Probably they were intended as both—another instance of ontology running prematurely into the same mould with epistemology. But the confusion signifies little; for, whether they be understood in reference to cognitions or in reference to things, it is certain that not one of them represents the highest unity, either of knowledge or of existence. It may be true that the mind cannot have cognitions of trees, unless it carries them up into the higher cognition (or unity) expressed by the genus "tree." But neither can the mind have these or any other cognitions, unless it carries them all up into the still higher cognition, or unity, expressed by the genus "self." All the other species and genera of cognition, expressed, for example, by the words "man," "flower," "animal,"" body," &c., are mere subordinate unities, mere abstractions, which have no meaning, and no presentability to the mind, until carried