Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/204

194 down between physics and philosophy. In ourselves, as well as in nature, a certain given series of phenomena is presented to our observation, but in studying the objects of nature, we add no new phenomenon to the phenomena already there; whereas, on the contrary, in studying ourselves we do add a new phenomenon to the other phenomena of our being; we add, to wit, the fact that we are thus studying ourselves. Be this new phenomenon important or unimportant, it is, at any rate, evident that in it is violated the analogy between physics and philosophy, between the study of man and the study of nature. For what can be a greater or more vital distinction between two sciences or disciplines than this; that while the one contributes nothing to the making of its own facts, but finds them all (to use a very familiar colloquism) cut and dried beneath its hand, the other creates, in part at least, its own facts, supplies to a certain extent, and by its own free efforts, as we shall see, the very materials out of which it is constructed?

But the parallel between physics and philosophy, although radically violated by this new fact, is not totally subverted; and our popular philosophy has preferred to follow out the track where the parallel partially holds good. It is obvious that two courses of procedure are open to her choice. Either, following the analogy of the natural sciences, which of themselves add no new fact to their objects, she may attend exclusively to the phenomena which she finds in man, but which she has no hand in contributing;