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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VII.————
trine of ideas was designed by Plato to correct this contradictory thinking, by pointing out the suppressed element, which, although really present in cognition, is, for the most part, overlooked. But the doctrine was incomplete, and only partially successful. Plato fell short, as has been said, of the summum genus, the universal constituent of cognition—that which we are all intimately familiar with, and usually a good deal concerned about—namely, ourselves.
Perhaps the ego is the summum genus of existence as well as of cognition.13. In connection with these remarks, this short observation may be made, that the ego having been shown by the epistemological generalisation to be the summum genus of cognition, it may also turn out to be the summum genus of existence; and that thus far, at least, Knowing and Being are coincident. We should thus obtain, not an abstract and unintelligible universal, like ens, but, instead of this, an actual, living, and intelligible universal at the head of all things. We must either suppose this, or fall into the frightful scepticism of holding that the laws of thought bear no sort of analogy to the laws of existence; that there is no parallelism between them; and that there can be no true knowledge, in any quarter, of anything which truly is, but only a false knowledge of that which wears the false semblance of Being. All psychology hangs by a thread over the abyss of this hideous hypothesis