Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/251

RhPROP. VII.———— very reverse. She holds that the "me" is a special cognition distinguished numerically from our other cognitions, just as they are numerically distinct from one another. The common element, in virtue of which our cognitions constitute a class, has obtained no expression in all the deliverances of psychology.

28. The most memorable consequence of this blundering procedure on the part of psychology, is that it has caused her to miss the only argument which has any degree of force or reason in favour of the immateriality of the ego, mind, subject, or thinking principle. The present and the preceding proposition afford the sole premises from which that conclusion can be deduced; and therefore psychology, having virtually denied both of these premises, is unable to adduce any valid, or even intelligible, ground in support of her opinion when she advocates the immateriality of the mind. Here the spiritualist is at fault quite as much as the materialist, in so far as reasoning is concerned, as shall be shown in the next proposition and its appendages.