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Rh work during the years which had elapsed since he first began to be really interested in philosophy, and to feel that the way of looking at it adopted almost universally in Scotland was not satisfying to himself, or in any way defensible.

The whole point in Ferrier's view turns upon the way in which we look at 'Mind.' 'The human mind, to speak it profanely,' says Ferrier, 'is like the goose that laid the golden eggs. The metaphysician resembles the analytic poulterer who slew it to get at them in a lump, and found nothing for his pains…. Look at thought, and feeling, and passion, as they glow in the pages of Shakespeare—golden eggs indeed! Look at the same as they stagnate on the dissecting-table of Dr. Brown, and marvel at the change. Behold how shapeless and extinct they have become!' Locke began by saying there are no original ideas, simply impressions from without; Hume then says cause and effect are incapable of explanation, and the notion which we form of them is a nonentity, seeing that we have a series of impressions alone to work from; Reid says there is a mind and there is an object, and calls in common-sense to interpret between the two. But the mistake all through is very evident: man looks at Nature in a certain way, interprets her by certain categories, and then he turns his eye upon himself, endeavouring thereby to judge of what he finds within by methods of a similar kind. And the human mind cannot be so 'objectised'; it is something more than the sum of its 'feelings,' 'passions,' and 'states of mind.' Dr. Reid had done a service by exploding the old doctrine of 'ideas'; he brought mind into contact with immediate things, but much more is left for us to do; the same office has to be performed for 'mind'—that is, mind when