Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/62

52 cannot be viewed as a psychological question; which reason is this, that the very phenomena themselves, inherent, or supposed to be inherent, in this entity, do not, properly speaking, or otherwise than in the most indirect manner possible, constitute any part of the facts of psychology, and therefore any discussion connected with them, or with the subject in which they may inhere, is a discussion extraneous and irrelevant to the real and proper science. Further, he rejected the question as one which was above the powers of man: we scout it as one which is immeasurably beneath them. He refused to acknowledge it because he considered the human faculties weakly incompetent to it: we scorn it, because, knowing what the true business and aim of psychology is, we consider it miserably incompetent to them. In short, we pass it by with the most supreme indifference. Let the metaphysician, then, retain "the human mind" if he will, and let him make the most of it. Let him regard it as the general complement of all the phenomena alluded to. Let him consider it their subject of inherence if he pleases, and he will find that there is no danger of our quarrelling with him about that. We will even grant it to be a convenient generic term expressing the sum-total of the sensations, passions, intellectual states, &c., by which the human being is visited.

But the metaphysician does not stop here. He will not be satisfied with this admission. He goes much further, and demands a much greater