Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/540

530 permanent; its knowledge as the temporary and the fluctuating. It teaches that the mind is the moulder of knowledge, and not that knowledge is the moulder of the mind.

Opposed to this doctrine stands what we would call the genuine metaphysical theory of the human mind. According to this theory, knowledge is not the accident and appendage, it is the essence and the existence of the mind. This doctrine is precisely the reverse of the preceding one. There our mental existence, our intellectual constitution, is laid down as the basis of knowledge; here knowledge is laid down as the basis of our mental existence, as the maker, under God, of our mental constitution. I am convinced that such among you as may intend to hereafter prosecute your speculative researches in a profound and zealous spirit, and to study philosophy both in itself and in its history,—I am convinced that you must build your labours upon the distinction now brought before you.

Whichever of the theories you may yourselves adopt it is essential to the prosecution of your philosophical studies that you should be made aware of the existence of the distinction between them. The one of these theories regards knowledge or ideas as the essence of the mind; the other of them regards the mind as something which may exist destitute of all knowledge or ideas. The former we may call the metaphysical, the latter the psychological theory of the mind. This distinction lies at the very root of philosophy, and by