PROP. XVII.————
τὸ ὄν whether applied to cognition or to existence, was used indiscriminately to signify one member only (that is, the universal part) of the total synthesis, whether of knowledge or of existence, and also to signify the total synthesis, consisting of the two members, universal and particular. And in like manner, the words εἶδος, ἰδέα, νοητόν, seem sometimes to have stood for the one member only in the total synthesis of cognition (that is, for the universal part), and sometimes for the total synthesis, embracing the two factors, universal and particular. And thus the same terms came to be somewhat abusively employed to signify both the substantial (that is, the completed synthesis, consisting of the universal and the particular,—our "subject-plus-object") and the phenomenal (that is, a mere part of the synthesis—to wit, the universal part, or our "subject"). This ambiguity has undoubtedly been the occasion of much of the perplexity of thought and confusion of exposition which abound in the histories of philosophy.
These ambiguities accounted for.19. It is not difficult to point out the origin of these ambiguities. The first is to be attributed to the want of a clear line of demarcation between ontology and epistemology. The second is explained by this consideration, that the universal element is so much the more important member of the two in the total synthesis (whether of cog-