Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/40

30 an object to? Not to me, for I am it, and not something else. Not to something else without being again denuded of consciousness; for this other being could only mark its changes as I did, and not endow it with consciousness without vesting in it its own personality, as I had done. Perhaps you imagine that the synthesis of 'I' and 'mind' may be resolved; and that thus the latter may again be made the object of your research. Do you maintain that the synthesis may be resolved in the first place really? Then you adopt our first supposition when we supposed that 'mind' was not 'I.' In this case 'mind' is left with all its changing phenomena, its emotions, passions, &c., and the consciousness of them remains vested in that which is called 'I,' and thus 'mind' is divested of its most important fact. Or, in the second place, do you suppose the synthesis resolved ideally? But, in this case too, it will be found that the fact of consciousness clings on the one side of the inquiring subject ('I'), and cannot be conceived on the side of the object inquired into ('mind'), unless the synthesis of the subject and object which was ideally resolved be again ideally restored. The conclusion of this is, that if the synthesis of 'I' and 'mind' be resolved either really or ideally, consciousness vanishes from 'mind,' and if it be maintained entire, 'mind' becomes inconceivable as an object of research. Finally, are you driven to the admission that mind is an object, only in a fictitious sense; then here indeed you speak the truth. That