Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/57

Rh argument by many additional explanatory statements, or to incur the stigma of leaving it very incomplete, and, as many may think, very inconclusive. In order, therefore, to escape the latter of these alternatives, we will do our best to embrace and comply with the former of them. Such being our reasons, we now nail our colours to the mast, and prepare ourselves for a good deal of polemical discussion on the subject of "the human mind." And the first point to be determined is: What is the exact question at issue?

That man is a creature who displays many manifestations of reason, adapting means to the production of ends in a vast variety of ways; that he is also susceptible of a great diversity of sensations, emotions, passions, &c., which, in one form or another, keep appearing, disappearing, and reappearing within him, with few intermissions, during his transit from the cradle to the grave, is a fact which no one will dispute. This, then, is admitted equally by the ordinary metaphysician and by us. Further, the metaphysician postulates, or lays down, "mind" and not "body," as the substance in which these phenomena inhere; and this may readily enough be admitted to him. "Mind," no doubt, is merely an hypothesis, and violates one of the fundamental axioms of science, that, namely, which has been called the principle of philosophical parsimony: