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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. X.————
Comment on second misconception.the first. The two hang inseparably together. The psychologists, those arch-corrupters of philosophy, have confounded the old distinction between sense and intellect, by supposing that sense was to some extent invested with the functions of intellect Whether they conceived that the material universe per se was to some extent intelligible, because the senses were a sort of intellect capable of cognising it, or, conversely, that the senses were a sort of intellect capable of this cognisance, because the material universe per se was to some extent intelligible, is a point not worth inquiring into. Certain it is that these two positions go together in the ordinary books upon psychology. Matter, or its qualities at least, are held to be cognisable per se, and the senses are held to be, in their own way, a sort of cognitive power—a kind of intellect. But if the senses are a sort of intellect, what sort of intellect is intellect? If the senses execute the office of the intellect, what function has the intellect to perform? If the senses are promoted into the place of the intellect, the intellect must go elsewhere—it must "move on." If the senses are it, and execute its work, it must be something else, and must execute some other work. What that something else is, and what that other work is, no mortal psychologist has ever told, or ever can tell. The curse of an everlasting darkness rests upon all his labours. The attempt, indeed, to face systems which, while
