Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/62

The charge of disrespect which might be supposed to attach to philosophy on account of her polemical character, obviatedmight otherwise be brought against the philosopher for holding very cheap the spontaneous judgments of mankind, it may be proper to mention that it is his own natural modes of thinking which he finds fault with, much more than it is theirs. He is dealing directly only with himself. He is directly correcting only his own customary oversights. It is only indirectly, and on the presumption that other people are implicated in the same transgressions,—faults, however, which he takes home more especially to himself, because he has no direct knowledge of theme except within his own bosom,—that he challenges, and ventures to infer that he is rectifying their inadvertent thinking as well as his own. Let this be distinctly understood once for all. The philosopher labours just as much as other people do under all the infirmities incident to popular opinion. He is not one whit more exempt from the failings which he points out, and endeavours to put right, than any of his neighbours are. His quarrel is not with them; it is with himself—a subject which he is not only entitled, but which he is bound to reform and coerce as rigorously as he can.

This system also adverse to psychology—and why.§ 43. But further, it will be observed that this system is antagonistic, not only to natural thinking, but, moreover, to many a point of psychological doctrine. This, too, is inevitable. Psychology, or "the science of the human mind," instead of at-