Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/504

494 but only as two distinct elements of one substance, and no distinction can be more absolute and complete than this. Now, all those opinions about mind being vapour or fire, this or that, may be given to the winds. It is nothing but the universal and permanent, and no other character can be assigned without destroying the very idea of it.

10. One word in conclusion. The illustration now laid before you may be regarded as an exposition in outline of the whole philosophy of ancient Greece. There cannot be a doubt that the early Greek philosophers reached the idea of mind through the process described. It was because the idea of something permanent was a thought which they could not help thinking that they gave expression to this thought in the word which signifies mind. It was because the idea of something changing or changeable was a thought that they could not help thinking that they gave expression to this thought in the word which signifies matter. The early Greek philosophy was occupied entirely in the adjustment and clearing up of these ideas; and these ideas of mind on the one hand and of matter on the other, were felt to be ideas which men could not help thinking, inasmuch as the idea of a permanent on the one hand, and of a mutable on the other, of one and many, are ideas which we cannot help thinking. But the further prosecution of this subject I must reserve until a future occasion.