Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/43

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the foregoing dialogue it was shown that language itself, and consequently that the very nature of thought, render impracticable anything like a true and real science of the human mind. It appeared that if mind be conceived of as an object of research, its vital distinguishing and fundamental phenomenon, namely, consciousness, necessarily becomes invisible, inasmuch as it adheres tenaciously to the side of the inquiring subject; and that if it be again invested with this phenomenon, it becomes from that moment inconceivable as an object. In the first case, a science of it is nugatory, because it cannot see or lay hold of its principal and peculiar phenomenon. In the second case, it is impossible, because it has no object to work upon. We are now going to tread still more deeply into the realities of the subject.

In the preceding chapter the question was put, whether reason or intelligence, considered as the essential endowment of mind, was not sufficient to explain away every difficulty involved in the consideration,