PROP. VI.————
very early period, were impressed with the correct conviction that all science is the pursuit of the universal amid the particular, the permanent amid the fluctuating, the necessary amid the contingent, the One in the All. But they applied this right method to the consideration of a wrong object. Overlooking, or paying but little heed to, the circumstance that all knowledge is made up of these two constituents, they leaped forward, without sufficient evidence, to the conclusion that all existence is composed in the same way—is a synthesis of the particular and the universal. They thus lost themselves, at the outset, in ontological rhapsodies and hypotheses. Instead of pausing to study the constitution of knowledge, as that which could alone afford a reasonable basis for any scheme of ontology—instead of searching out the element common to all knowledge, the necessary, as distinguished from the contingent, part of thinking—the factor which never varies amid all the fluctuations of cognition—the one known in all known—they proceeded at once to the investigation of Being, and went in quest of the element common to all existence—the factor which never varies amid all the fluctuations of the natural universe—the necessary, as distinguished from the contingent, part of things—the one Being in all being; and, in consequence of this inverted procedure, their researches ended in nought.
