Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind Volume 2 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 edition. Excerpt: ... LETTER XXL THE PRESENT CONDITION, ESTIMATION, AND PROSPECTS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND. On casting a retrospective glance over the two series of letters which I am now hastening to close, I cannot help being sensible that the philosophy of the human mind, as received and taught by its most eminent cultivators, stands out in my representations as being in an extremely unsatisfactory condition. In regard to this point you will see that I coincide in a great measure with the late Sydney Smith, who, in a passage which I have before quoted, declared that the language and divisions of intellectual philosophy appeared to him to be in a most barbarous state. I shall not now attempt to enter further, except incidentally, into the causes of this disheartening position of the science, but will content myself with offering a few remarks in vindication of its rank and importance, and with briefly touching on one or two considerations which claim to be attended to in all endeavours to improve what so much wants improvement. Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, vol. ii. p. 23. Of one thing we may at the outset make ourselves sure: there can be no real progress in mental philosophy without the most careful precision of language, the uniform and consistent employment of all terms on which our statements and inferences depend, and the rigorous exclusion of fictitious entities and imaginary events. Neither can any progress be achieved without minute selfintrospection, nor without the trouble (or the tediousness if you will) of making very nice and subtile distinctions amongst the phenomena of consciousness, as well as the words in which they are described; and, what is of equal moment, in the views right or wrong which have been taken of them. These...