Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/499

Rh afterwards perceive more clearly what the necessary, the unavoidable, the philosophical thought on that same point is. Let me ask, then, what your opinion is in regard to the mind? This that people call mind may be taken as a common and fair subject of opinion, and opinions differ in regard to it. One man is of opinion that it is a sort of vapour; another man is of opinion that it is a kind of fire; another man's opinion is that it is a species of attenuated matter different both from vapour and fire; the opinion of a fourth is that it is a material substance, nature unknown; a fifth thinks that it is immaterial, a spiritual substance, nature also unknown, altogether different from matter, and so on. These are all so many different opinions, and in all these, opinions there is not one particle of thinking. It may be that the man who supposes that the mind is immaterial or spiritual is more in the right than the others. But still his judgment is a mere opinion. He might have thought otherwise. It rests on no necessary grounds. It is not a thought which we cannot help thinking. If this opinion has a place in philosophy, it is there without any legitimate title. It is only accidentally, and not essentially philosophical.

8. Let us now consider what thought, necessary thought, declares in regard to the mind. Let us consider the case of a genuine speculator, of one who thinks and who does not form opinions in regard to the mind. Of course we put aside this word "mind,"