Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/461

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THEORY OF IGNORANCE.
433

PROP. VIII.————

there can be an ignorance only of the objective and subjective in union, only of the synthesis of the universal and particular, only of the concretion of the ego and the non-ego; in other words, the object of all ignorance is, of necessity, some-object-plus-some-subject.

OBSERVATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.

Relation of this proposition to Prop. II of the epistemology.1. Just as Proposition II. of the epistemology fixes what the object of all possible knowledge is, so this proposition fixes what the object of all possible ignorance is; and, moreover, just as the object of all knowledge is determined by a reference to the law of all knowledge laid down in Proposition I. of the epistemology, so the object of all ignorance is determined by a reference to the law of all ignorance given out in the third of the agnoiology. Once concede (and how can the concession be evaded?) that a self or subject must be known along with all that is known, and subject plus object becomes of necessity the only possible object of cognition—the only knowable: once concede (and how can the concession be evaded?) that there can be an ignorance only of the knowable, and object plus subject becomes of necessity the only possible object of ignorance—the only ignorable—if so barbarous a word be permissible. Thus the main purpose of this section of the science is attained, which