Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/68

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an introduction to the

united, and of being viewed in the amalgamation of one. Therefore," continues he, "mind, view it as you please, analyse it, or make what discriminations within it you like, is still rightly to be regarded as constituting the real and complete man, and as monopolising the whole of that which is truly he."

If this argument be valid, we must own ourselves completely foiled, and the fight is done. For if it be true that the distinction we are contending for be merely a dead analytical discrimination, and not a real and wonder-working antithesis, a vital antagonism in human nature which, practically operating, brings about all the good and evil of man and of society; and which, working ceaselessly throughout all time, as well as in the individual breast, increases in energy the longer it maintains itself, marking distinctly the progress of the species, and advancing it on and on from that which it once was to that which it now is, and to that which it shall yet be: if it be not, we say, a distinction of this kind, but merely an inoperative "analysis of mind," then we give it up as virtually void, as altogether insignificant, and unworthy of a further thought.

But our whole system proceeds upon the reality and vitality of this distinction. It founds itself not upon any principle arising out of an analysis of mind; not upon any distinction made within mind; but upon a real antithesis to be established between what belongs, or may be admitted to belong to mind, and what does not and cannot belong to it; and