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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VIII.————
was to demonstrate the coincidence of the result of the agnoiology with the result of the epistemology, or to show that the only object of all knowledge is also the only object of all ignorance. (See Introduction, § 60.)
The object of ignorance is neither nothing nor the contradictory. 2. Novel, and somewhat startling, as this doctrine may seem, it will be found, on reflection, to be the only one which is consistent with the dictates of an enlightened common sense; and the more it is scrutinised, the truer and the more impregnable will it appear. If we are ignorant at all (and who will question our ignorance?) we must be ignorant of something; and this something is not nothing, nor is it the contradictory. That is admitted on all hands. But every attempt to fix the object of our ignorance as anything but object + subject must have the effect of fixing it either as nothing, or as the contradictory. Let it be fixed as things per se, or as thoughts per se—that is, without any subject; but things or thoughts, without any subject, are the contradictory, inasmuch as they are the absolutely unknowable and inconceivable. Therefore, unless we can be ignorant of the contradictory (a supposition which is itself contradictory, and in the highest degree absurd), we cannot be ignorant of things per se, or of thoughts per se. Again, let it be fixed as subject per se, as the ego with no thing or thought present to it. But
