116 FEOF. FEEEIER 05" KNOWING AND BEING. 



natives of Being not have been assumed as two, viz ; either first, 

 that which admits of being known, or secondly, that which is un- 

 knowable, in other words, the contradictory ? (The former of these 

 alternatives would comprehend the two first of our author). Then, 

 when Absolute Existence was proved to be not the contradictory, it 

 would at once follow that it must be the synthesis of subject and 

 object ; for (by the Epistemology) nothing except a synthesis of 

 subject and object is capable of being known. 



The whole may be thus summed up. The Theory of knowing 

 (that what is known in the synthesis of subject and object) is un- 

 proved. The condition on which alone it could be proved, even if 

 true, (viz , that knowledge be defined) is not fulfilled. A definition of 

 knowledge is no doubt supposed to be involved in the proposition, 

 that along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must know 

 itself. But, on the one hand this is not a definition of knowledge, 

 but a statement regarding what is known ; and on the other hand it 

 is impossible to form any idea of what is meant by an object known, 

 till an exposition of knowledge itself has been rendered. There is 

 no reason to think that a definition of knowledge, in the most un- 

 restricted sense, admits of being given. Even were it possible to 

 designate all the cognitions of finite minds by one notion, the as- 

 sumption that the knowledge of the uncreated infinite God has any 

 thing in common with that of his creatures, would be unwarrant- 

 able. The fundamental error of the Epistemology, that there are 

 necessary laws by which all intelligence is governed, extends itself 

 to the Ontology, where it is affirmed that what exists is not the con- 

 tradictory. This, though presented, not as a definition, but as the 

 result of reasoning, is in reality our author's definition of existence. 

 That he does not demonstrate it, is evident from the consideration 

 that no definition of existence, besides what the proposition itself 

 affords, is furnished as the starting point of a demonstration. Abso- 

 lute Existence, then, is defined as the ]STon-Contradictory. In other 

 words it is what can be conceived per se. But unless some common 

 characteristics of all thinking, whether divine or human, can be 

 specified, the word conception must either be taken otherwise than 

 as descriptive of our thinking specially — in which case we can at- 

 tach no idea to it, and the definition of existence is meaningless ; or 

 it must be used of our thinking specially — in which case the definition 

 (implying as it does, that nothing exists except what we are con- 

 tingently capable of conceiving) is a palpable begging of the great 

 question at issue. 



As Professor Eerrier in more than one passage illustrates his 



