THEORY OF BEING.
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PROP. IX.————
intellect can think of without running into a contradiction.
Eighthly: it is under no oligation to explain the origin of knowledge, because knowledge itself the Beginning.35. Eighthly. By these considerations this system is absolved from all obligation to point out the causes or origin of cognition. The truths which it has reached render that question absurd. It is unanswerable, because it is unaskable. The question is, What are the conceivable causes in existence which generate knowledge? And the answer is, That no existence at all can be conceived by any intelligence anterior to, and aloof from, knowledge. Knowledge of existence—the apprehension of oneself and other things—is alone true existence. This is itself the First, the Bottom, the Origin—and this is what all intelligence is prevented by the laws of all reason from ever getting beyond or below. To inquire what this proceeds from, is as inept as to ask what is the Beginning of the Beginning. All the explanations which can be proposed can find their data only by presupposing the very knowledge whose genesis they are professing to explain. In thinking of things as antecedent to all knowledge, some me or mind must always be thought of along with them; and in thinking of some me or mind as antecedent to all knowledge, some things or determinations must always be thought of along with it. But the conception of this synthesis is itself the conception of knowledge; so that we are compelled to