114 PEOF. EEEEIEK ON KNOWING AND BEING. 



Professor Perrier remarks in one place that philosophy stands much 

 " in want of a clear and developed doctrine of the Contradictory. " 

 No question hut it does— and I humbly think that the Professor's 

 own disquisitions afford evidence of this. Not casually or per in- 

 cariam, but formally, and as a vital part of his system, he lays down 

 the position, that Real Being is not the absolutely inconceivable — as 

 if the words did, or could to us convey any idea ! Let it be dis- 

 tinctly understood that we cannot speak of absolute inconceivabili- 

 ty, without saying we know not what— speaking in an unknown 

 tongue, or rather in a tongue which is no tongue at all— becoming 

 barbarians alike to ourselves and to others. It is ridiculous here to 

 adduce such examples as a square circle, or a stick with only one 

 end, to illustrate the assertion that it is within our power intelligibly 

 to talk of absolute inconceivability in certain cases. Examples of 

 this sort are nothing to the purpose. I can conceive a square. I 

 can also conceive a circle. These two conceptions are mutually re- 

 pugnant. In this sense, a square circle may be pronounced the ab- 

 solutely contradictory ; that is to say, the expression square circle 

 brings forward two ideas incapable of agreeing with one another in 

 any mind in which the ideas separately can be realised. The same 

 may be said, mutatis mutandis, of the stick with only one end, 

 which is so mighty a favorite with our author. But who does not 

 see, that though an expression significant of two conceptions, each 

 of which we are capable of realising, but which are irreconcilable 

 with one another, may in a perfectly intelligible sense be called a 

 contradiction absolutely, it is not thereby proved to be competent 

 for us to speak of an absolutely inconceivable, where no ideas are 

 brought before the mind at all ? 



"When Being has been identified, whether by definition or by 

 supposed proof, with the Non-Contradictory, our author's task 

 would seem to be ended. Por, if nothing can be known by any in- 

 telligence, except a subject in synthesis with an object ; and if Ab- 

 solute Existence is not the Contradictory, and is therefore know- 

 able, Absolute Existence must be the synthesis of subject and ob- 

 ject — which is the ultimate conclusion of the Institutes— their 

 grand Q. E. D. The equation not only of the known and the ex- 

 istent with each other, but of each of them with a subject united to 

 an object, is made out. Professor Perrier, however, is not satisfied to 

 enter port so easily. Betwixt the Epistemology and the Ontology, 

 lie has introduced a cumbrous series of propositions forming an 

 Agnoiology (as it is euphoniously entitled) or Theory of Ignorance, 

 which he considers indispensable to a legitimate procedure in the On- 



