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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. XXII.————
remarked at the outset, are derivations from the primary law set forth in Proposition I.
How these remarks qualify the doctrine of the absolute given in Prop. XXI.8. The foregoing considerations tend to qualify, in certain respects, the doctrine of the known absolute which was broached in Proposition XXI. The absolute in our cognition is ourselves apprehending things by one or more of our five senses. But only one of the factors of this synthesis is definite and invariable—to wit, self: the other factors must be some thing or some thought, and some way of knowing it. But inasmuch as the particular constituents of cognition are variable and inexhaustible, as was explained in Prop. VI. Obs. 2, it is, of course, impossible for any system to declare what particular things, or what particular thoughts, or what particular modes of apprehension, shall, in all cases, enter into the synthesis of cognition. Hence all that we are entitled to predicate in regard to the absolute in all cognition is, that it is a synthesis consisting of a self (this alone is definite and nameable) and objects, or thoughts, and modes of apprehension of some kind or other (these being indefinite and unnameable). In other words, we are not entitled to give out as the absolute in all cognition a subject plus the particular things that we are cognisant of, and plus the particular senses which we have been endowed with—but only a subject plus some