Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/84

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then is the precise effect of our argument against the prevailing doctrine of the "human mind"? If the word "mind" be used merely to express the general group or assemblage of passions, emotions, intellectual states, and other modifications of being, which both man and the animal creation are subject to, we have no objections whatever to the use of the term. If it should further please the metaphysician to lay down "mind" as a distinct entity to which these various states or changes are to be referred, we shall not trouble ourselves with quarrelling with this hypothesis either. All we say is, that the man himself, and the true and proper facts of the man's nature, are not to be found here. In the case of animals, we shall admit that "mind," that is, some particular modification of passion, sensation, reason, and so forth, constitutes, and is convertible while it lasts with the true and proper being of the animal subject to that change; because here there is nothing over and above the ruling passion of the time. There is no distinction made