THEORY OF KNOWING.
401
PROP. XXII.————
sions, than the contradictory transcendence of consciousness (the transcendence, namely, by which it is supposed to pass out of and beyond itself, and to lay hold of material things in a state of absolute secernment from itself) for which psychology usually contends: further, in answer to the question, What is absolutely unknown and unknowable? it replies that everything without a "me" known along with it, and that every "me" without a thing or thought known along with it, is absolutely unknown and unknowable; in other words, that the two factors (universal and particular) which are required to constitute every cognition, present nothing but contradictions to the mind when taken singulatim, or apart from one another.
The importance of this result.16. In each of the foregoing propositions either a contradictory inadvertency of ordinary thinking, or an erroneous deliverance of psychology—to which expression is given in the counter-propositions—is corrected and removed, while a necessary truth of reason is, in each case, substituted in their room. So far, at let, the system has fulfilled the pledge held out in the Introduction, § 47. And, on the whole, it is submitted that the result of this reasoned theory of knowledge, though sufficiently simple, is neither insignificant nor unsatisfactory. It can scarcely be regarded as unimportant, unless the conversion of the soul of man from darkness to