suppose one set of feelings or one part of the mind
to interpret another? Is the introspecting thought the same with the
thought which is introspected? Has the mind the power of surveying its
whole domain at one and the same time?--No more than the eye can take in
the whole human body at a glance. Yet there may be a glimpse round the
corner, or a thought transferred in a moment from one point of view to
another, which enables us to see nearly the whole, if not at once,
at any rate in succession. Such glimpses will hardly enable us to
contemplate from within the mind in its true proportions. Hence the
firmer ground of Psychology is not the consciousness of inward feelings
but the observation of external actions, being the actions not only of
ourselves, but of the innumerable persons whom we come across in life.

b. The error of supposing partial or occasional explanation of
mental phenomena to be the only or complete ones. For example, we are
disinclined to admit of the spontaneity or discontinuity of the mind--it
seems to us like an effect without a cause, and therefore we suppose the
train of our thoughts to be always called up by association. Yet it is
probable, or indeed certain, that of many mental phenomena there are no
mental antecedents, but only bodily ones.

c. The false influence of language. We are apt to suppose that when
there are two or more words describing faculties or processes of the
mind, there are real differences corresponding to them. But this is not
the case. Nor can we determine how far they do or do not exist, or
by what degree or kind of difference they are distinguished. The same
remark may be made about figures of speech. They fill up the vacancy of
knowledge; they are to the mind what too much colour is to the eye; but
the truth is rather concealed than revealed by them.

d. The uncertain meaning of terms, such as Consciousness, Conscience,
Will, Law, Knowledge, Internal and External Sense; these, in the
language of Plato, 'we shamelessly use, without ever having taken the
pains to analyze them.'

e. A science such as Psychology is not merely an hypothesis, but
an hypothesis which, unlike the hypotheses of Physics, can never be
verified. It rests only on the general impressions of mankind, and there
is little or no hope of adding in any considerable degree to our stock
of mental facts.

f. The parallelism of the Physical Sciences, which leads us to analyze
the mind on the analogy of the