Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Institutes of Metaphysic (1875)/Section 3/Proposition 4
PROPOSITION IV.
ELIMINATES THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE:
DEMONSTRATION.
Whatever we neither know nor are ignorant of is the contradictory (Prop. II.) Absolute Existence is not the contradictory (Prop. III.) Therefore Absolute Existence is not what we neither know nor are ignorant of.
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.
What this proposition effects.1. This proposition clears off one of the alternatives in regard to Absolute Existence. In the next proposition the residuum which remains is enunciated and proved.
Fourth counter proposition. Why there is none.2. There is no fourth counter-proposition; because the system has now reached, by legitimate steps, the conclusion which Counter-proposition I. reached illegitimately and prematurely.
The previous propositions are preliminary.
Prop.V. is the starting point.3. To some persons, the logical operation developed in the preceding propositions, by which the third alternative, in regard to Absolute Existence, is eliminated from the list, may appear superfluous. It is, indeed, by no means certain that the operation referred to is not superfluous. Its performance has been prompted by the anxiety to do the work completely, to deal with every difficulty which may arise, and to staunch all the possible sources of objection. To those, however, who think that it might have been dispensed with, the starting-point of the ontology will present itself in the next proposition.