and least of all do I agree with him in confounding logic and metaphysics.
One word more, in passing, upon my connection with Hegel. Mr Cairns says, in his second pamphlet ("The Scottish Philosophy"), "The two foundation principles of the Hegelian philosophy, according to Mr Morell, viz., the identity of thought and existence, and the union of two contradictories in all knowledge, I have incidentally pointed out in Professor Ferrier's system." I have stated distinctly in the Institutes (prop. vi., obs. 10), that to demonstrate the equation (not the identity, as Mr Cairns expresses it) of Knowing and Being—the known and the existent—is the highest office of philosophy; that to do this is to reach the truth. It is to be remembered, however, that knowing in this place does not mean mere human, but superhuman, knowing—a circumstance which Mr Cairns has omitted to mention in his assertion that I maintain the identity (properly the equation) of thought and existence. As for the statement that I have followed Hegel in this, I shall content myself with remarking, that if Mr Cairns will produce from Hegel's writings a single observation on the coincidence of Knowing and Being, which is intelligible to any living soul, I will at once concede Hegel's priority, and admit Mr Cairns' accuracy; but until that be done, I may be pardoned for retaining my suspicions on both of these points. Concerning the other doctrine attributed to Hegel, on the authority of Mr Morell, in regard to the union of two contradictories in all knowledge, I have just to state that I have conversed on this point with Mr Morell himself, when he owned that he did not understand one word of all that Hegel had written about knowledge being a union of contradictories, but that he perfectly understood this doctrine as expounded in my work. Thus, between Hegel and me on this point, if there be any coincidence at all, it is such a coincidence as may exist between two positions, the one of which is absolute darkness to a man of the finest philosophical capacities (as Mr Morell is), and the other of which is clear to him as noon-day. There may be a coincidence, but Mr Cairns has not even attempted to show it. Indeed all that he says about
