Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Institutes of Metaphysic (1875)/Section 3/Proposition 6
PROPOSITION VI.
WHAT ABSOLUTE EXISTENCE IS NOT.
DEMONSTRATION.
Matter per se is neither that which we know (Prop. IV. Epistemology) nor that which we are ignorant of (Prop. V. Agnoiology). But Absolute Existence is either that which we know or that which we are ignorant of (Prop. V. Ontology). Therefore Absolute Existence is not matter per se; in other words, mere material things have no true and independent Being.
Or again—Matter per se is the contradictory, inasmuch as it is necessarily unknowable by all intelligence (Prop. IV. Epistemology). But Absolute Existence is not the contradictory (Prop. III. Ontology). It may possibly be known. Therefore Absolute Existence is not matter per se, &c. OBSERVATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.
Sixth counter-proposition.1. Sixth Counter-proposition.—"Absolute Existence is, or at least may be, matter per se; in other words, mere material things have, or may have, a true and independent Being."
Is approved of by ordinary thinking, and by psychology.2. There can be no doubt that ordinary thinking embraces this counter-proposition in its most dogmatical expression, and asserts positively that mere material things not only may have, but have a true and absolute and independent existence. Psychology, too, has a decided leaning towards this positive asseveration, which is advocated more particularly by our whole Scottish philosophy of common sense. After all that has been said, it is unnecessary to do more than refer to this opinion as part of the débris of a defunct and exploded psychology, which is now swept away and effaced for ever from science by these ontological institutes.
In what sense material things exist.3. When it is asserted that material things have no Absolute Existence, this must not be confounded with the affirmation that they have no existence at all. They have a spurious, or inchoate, or dependent existence. This has always been conceded by genuine speculation, although even this kind of existence may have been denied to them by some 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.