Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/64

54 the "state of mind" itself. Our great object is to keep these two distinctly and vividly asunder. This distinction is one which, as shall soon be shown, is constantly made both by common sense and by common language, a consideration which throws the presumption of truth strongly in our favour. It is one which appears to us to constitute the great leading principle upon which the whole of psychology hinges, one without the strict observance of which any science of ourselves is altogether impossible or null.

We are still, then, quite willing to vest in "mind" all the "states" of mind. But the fact of the consciousness of these states, the notion of himself as the person to whom this consciousness belongs, we insist in vesting in the man, or in that being who calls himself "I;" and in this little word expresses compendiously all the facts which really and truly belong to him. The question in dispute, and which has to be decided between the metaphysician and ourselves, may be thus worded: He wishes to give everything unto "mind," while we wish to give unto mind the things which are mind's, and unto man the things which are man's. If we can succeed in making good our point, psychology will be considerably lightened—lightened of a useless and unmarketable cargo which has kept her almost lockfast for many generations, and which she ought never to have taken on board; for our very first act will be to fling "mind" with all its lumber overboard, and, busying