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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VIII.————
advancing in strength towards the position where ontology lies intrenched; it is drawing closer and closer its lines of circumvallation around the encampment of Absolute Existence, and has already driven in its outposts.
This system is more humble in its pretensions than other systems. 9. From these remarks it will be seen, that this doctrine, so far from denying our ignorance, rather represents it as double. In fixing the object of ignorance as non-contradictory—in other words, in insisting (and in proving) that whenever we are ignorant of an object we must also be ignorant of a subject—this system teaches that we are ignorant of an intelligible, that is, not-nonsensical, whole; whereas ordinary thinking and psychology teach that we are ignorant of an unintelligible and nonsensical half (objects per se). It is true that the system, in concluding that there can be no ignorance of the contradictory, limits or abridges our ignorance in that particular direction. But, as has been said, it extends it in another direction, by showing that, in so far as we are ignorant, our ignorance must have for its object not merely one of the factors or elements of cognition, but must have for its object both of them,—the universal no less than the particular element, the subjective no less than the objective factor. Whenever we suppose that we can be ignorant of either of these without being ignorant of the other, we suppose that we can be