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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
This question resolved into two questions.What is knowledge? because this, in its obscurity, is the capital problem of our first section. The new question must be this question in a clear, presentable, and intelligible form. Now, when well considered, it will be found that the question, What is knowledge? must mean one of two things. It must mean either, first, What is knowledge in so far as its kinds differ? In plainer words—What different kinds of knowledge are there? Or it must mean, secondly, What is knowledge in so far as its various kinds agree? In plainer words—What is the one invariable feature, quality, or constituent, common to all our cognitions, however diverse and multifarious these, in other respects, may be?
Which of them is our question,—and the first in philosophy.§ 82. The unintelligible question, What is knowledge? having been resolved into the two intelligible questions, first, What different kinds of knowledge are there? and, secondly, What identical point is there in all the kinds of knowledge?—we have to consider which of these questions is our question—which of them is the truly proximate question of the epistemology. The one or the other of them must be this; for the question, What is knowledge? is not susceptible of being analysed into any other alternatives than these two. Which of them, then, is our question? Theætetus, it will have been observed (§ 78), was of opinion, rather
