Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/63

Rh to correct, does all in her power to ratify, the inadvertent deliverances of ordinary thought,—to prove them to be right. Hence psychology must, of necessity, come in for a share of the castigation which is doled out and directed upon common and natural opinion. It would be well if this could be avoided; but it cannot. Philosophy must either forego her existence, or carry on her operations corrective of ordinary thinking, and subversive of psychological science. It is, indeed, only by accident that philosophy is inimical to psychology: it is because psychology is the abettor and accomplice of common opinion after the act; but in reference to natural thinking, she is essentially controversial. Philosophy, however, is bound to deal much more rigorously and sternly with the doctrines of psychology than with the spontaneous judgments of unthinking man, because while these in themselves are mere oversights or inadvertencies, psychology converts them into downright falsities by stamping them with the countersign or imprimatur of a specious, though spurious, science. In the occasional cases, moreover, in which psychology instead of ratifying, endeavours to rectify the inadvertencies of popular thinking, it shall be shown, in the course of this work, that, so far from being successful, she only makes matters worse, by complicating the original error with a new contradiction, and sometimes with several new ones, of her own creation.