Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/77

 it no hypothesis respecting its substance. On the other hand, to the ego he never thinks of applying the epithet "my." And why not? Simply because it is he; and if mind also was he, he never would dream of applying the word "my" to it either. The ego is he, not something which he possesses. He therefore never attempts to objectify it, because it will not admit of this. But he can talk rightly and intelligibly of "my sensations;" that is to say, he can tell us that this ego is visited by various sensations, because he feels that the ego, that is, himself, is different from these sensations. At any rate, he never, of his own accord, confounds himself and his sensations or states of mind together. He never, in his natural state, uses the word "mind" as convertible with the word "I;" and if he did so, he would not be intelligible to his species. They would never know that he meant himself; and simply for this reason, that the fact of self-reference or consciousness is not contained or expressed in the word "mind," and cannot, indeed, be denoted by any word in the third person. It has been reserved for the "metaphysics of mind" to introduce into thought and language a confusion which man's natural understanding has always steered clear of.

We have found, then, that this distinction between the man himself (that called ego) and the states of mind which he is conscious of, obtains in the language of common sense, and we do not feel ourselves entitled to subvert or to neglect it. But to leave it