Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/502

PROP. VI.————

spurious systems of idealism. But absolute or independent existence only arises when the incipience of material things is supplemented by the element necessary to complete it. In short, they are what the Greek speculators called the μή ὄντα (that is, the contradictory), but they are not the οὐκ ὄντα (that is, the intelligibly non-existent). By themselves, material things are not nothing, but they are nonsense.