In setting forth the people’s system of natural philosophy as contained in lexicographies, we find that almost every word is used to express several meanings, similar in some respects and diverse in others. In consequence of this, we only can attempt thus much for mental science, as for many other subjects, viz., to describe the thing intended, and then to select the word most frequently used to express this idea, as set forth in our dictionaries. This, then, is the course pursued in the following pages. A description is set forth of a given act or state of mind, sufficient to identify it from all others, and then the word is selected from dictionaries of our language which has most frequently been used by the common people in expressing the idea intended. Thus every person who cares enough about the matter to read and think, can decide as well as the most celebrated metaphysician, whether the description given is _true to his own experience_, and also whether, according to lexicographers, the word selected is frequently used by man to express this idea. The writer, in her first attempts to investigate the philosophy of mind, examined the works of Stewart, Reid, Locke, Edwards, Brown, Coleridge, Cousin, Jouffroy, Coombe, Spurtzheim and several others. More recently some attention has been given to the writings of Sir William Hamilton, Hickok and others. The result has been the conviction, that most of these works contain the people’s system, more or less disguised with diverse modes of classification and new technics, which tend to render the whole subject misty and perplexing. And still more unfortunately, some of them attempt the discussion of questions which are unpractical and often unintelligible. As an example, certain metaphysicians have attempted to prove that there is nothing existing but mind, and that all which we believe to be realities without ourselves are not so, but merely ideas in the mind. Other metaphysicians have attempted to meet their arguments, and to prove that the world around us is a reality. Both attempts have ended in books which seem to have no sort of _practical_ influence either way. Men can not help believing that there is an outer world, and that the men and things that affect our senses are realities, and such arguments neither lessen nor increase this belief. Meantime, the books written to prove or disprove this truth are incomprehensible to most common minds, at least the writer of this work has in vain essayed to understand them, or to find any person who could communicate any clear ideas of their contents. CHAPTER XII. THE NATURE OF MIND, OR ITS POWERS AND FACULTIES. We have seen, in the preceding chapters, that our only mode of gaining a knowledge of the natural attributes of God, is by the study of the nature of mind. We have seen also that the only way to discover the nature of mind is to examine what are its qualities, and how it acts and is acted upon in _our own experience_.