belong to mind, and what does not and cannot belong to it; and 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 staid." 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 realizing, 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 argument contained in a former part of this discussion was intended; and the reader may, perhaps, be now placed in a situation which will enable him to perceive its drift more clearly. We will recapitulate it very shortly, and in somewhat different words from those formerly used.
An object is that which is either really or ideally different from ourselves; or in other words, is either different in itself, or is conceived of as different by us. Suppose, now, that the metaphysician makes use of the expression of common sense and ordinary language, "my mind." He here certainly appears, at first sight, to lay down a real discrimination between himself and his mind. Whatever he may intend to say, he clearly says that there are two of them, namely, his mind and himself, the "I" (call it the ego), possessing it. In this case, "mind" may contain what it likes, but the consciousness of what it contains certainly remains with the ego. In this case mind is really destitute of consciousness. Does the metaphysician disclaim this view of the matter? Does he say that mind is really himself, and is only ideally an object to him? Then we answer, that in this case mind is ideally divested of consciousness, and if the metaphysician thinks otherwise, he imposes upon himself. For how can he make it contain consciousness without first of all ideally replacing within it himself, the ego which he had ideally severed from it. But if he does make this reinvestment, mind (his object) at once vanishes from the scene; for none of us can attribute consciousness directly to another; we can only attribute it directly to another by becoming it, and if we become it, it ceases to be another; it becomes we, that is to say, nothing but the ego is left, and we have no object either ideally or really before us. The dilemma to which the philosophers of mind are reduced is this: unless they attribute consciousness to mind, they leave out of view the most important and characteristic phenomenon of man: and if they attribute consciousness to mind, they annihilate the object of their research, in so far as the whole extent of this fact is concerned.
So much in the shape of mere abstract reasoning upon this question. It appears to us that our point is now in a fair way of being completely made out. We think that, as far as mere reasoning can do it, we have succeeded in extricating the fact of consciousness from the oppressive and obscuring envelopment of "the human mind." But our views, their correctness, and their application, still require to be brought out and enforced by many explanations and observations of fact. We now, then, descend to various statements, illustrations, and practical considerations which will probably be still more plain and convincing than anything we have yet said. These, however, we reserve for the following chapter.
