PROP. XVII.————
that no man, in sober earnest, and if put upon oath, would ever say that he had got down, and fairly digested, that stone.
The exact point in the counter-proposition which natural thinking opposes to the proposition.6. In the counter-proposition it was stated that "the substantial is rather the separate members of the synthesis of objects plus a subject (matter mecum) than the total synthesis itself; but that these were not the substantial in cognition, but only in existence." To find the exact part of the counter-proposition which natural thinking adopts and sets up in antagonism to the proposition, we have merely to leave out the word "rather," and to affirm that "the substantial is the separate members of the synthesis, or, at any rate, is one of the factors of the synthesis—that, namely, which we call objects or matter—and this is the substantial both in cognition and in existence." Or, stated more shortly, the exact point of the counter-proposition, which is conformable to ordinary opinion, is this: "mere material objects are known substances."
Cotradiction in the counter-proposition, in so far as it is the product of natural thinking.7. The test of the truth of this statement is, as before, the definition of known substance. Can material things be known without anything else being known along with them? No, they cannot; because the "me" must always be known along with them (by Prop. I.) Therefore material things