Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/13

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As is well known, contradictory opinions about the value of introspection prevail. Comte and Maudsley, for example, call it worthless; and  come near calling it infallible. Both opinions are extravagances; the first for reasons too obvious to be given, the second because it fails to discriminate between the immediate feltness of a mental state and its perception by a subsequent act of reflection. The esse of a mental state, the advocates of infallibility say, is its sentiri; it has no recondite mode of being "in-itself". It must therefore be felt as it really is, without chance of error. But the feltness which is its essence is its own immanent and intrinsic feltness at the moment of being experienced, and has nothing to do with the way in which future conscious acts may feel about it. Such sentiri in future acts is not what is meant by its esse. And yet such post-mortem sentiri, is the only way in which the introspective psychologist can grasp it. In its bare immediacy it is of no use to him. For his purposes it must be more than experienced; it must be remembered, reflected on, named, classed, known, related to other facts of the same order. And as in