Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/69

Rh therefore we will not yield up this distinction by owning it to be analytical at all. We allow the metaphysician to take all man's passions, sensations, emotions, states, or whatever else he may choose to call them, and refer them to "mind," making this the object of his research. But when he attempts to lay hands on the fact of consciousness, and to make "mind" usurp this fact together with the being to whom this fact belongs, we exclaim, "Hold! hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther; here shall thy weak hypothesis be stayed." If he resists, the question must be put to the proof. Can the fact of consciousness, together with the man himself, be conceived of as vested in the object called "mind," as well as the sensations, passions, &c., which have been admitted to be vested therein? or must not this fact and the man himself be held transcendent to this object, and incapable of being objectified, or conceived of as an object at all? Unless we can make out this latter point, we shall fail in realising, in its truth and purity, the only fact with which, in our opinion, as we have already said, psychology ought to busy itself, namely, the fact of consciousness.

We have now, then, brought the question to its narrowest possible point. Can the fact of consciousness, together with our conscious selves, be conceived of as vested in the object called "the human mind"? It was to prove the negative side of this question, and thereby to support a conclusion which forms the very life and keystone of our system, that the