Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/516

506 part which thought or reason plays in the construction of our moral sentiments. They have not explained or comprehended the exact nature of thought, this being indeed rather a psychological than a moral research, and one which has been left very much in arrear by the psychology of innate ideas. The consequence is that the ethics which uphold an innate morality have inherited all the crudeness of the psychology on which they are founded, and exhibit that crudeness in a still more conspicuous aspect.

13. I pass on to the second topic of the discussion, viz., to consider the psychology of sensation, and the ethics which arise out of it. This system is a recoil from the doctrine of innate ideas. Just as the latter scheme tends to enlarge as widely as possible the sphere of innate cognition, and to attach to it the utmost importance, so the former proceeds on the principle of limiting this sphere to its narrowest dimensions, or of exploding it altogether. It allows to the mind no original furnishing at all, except a power of receptivity. The name of this receptive and entirely passive capacity is sensation. Outward things conveying impressions to the senses in particular, and to the nervous organism generally, are the source and origin of all our ideas. The mind is at first an absolute blank, and contributes no elements of its own to the formation of its cognitions. It originates nothing from within, but receives all its