"This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd.
And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory
it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you
to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external
sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every
intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in
making the most simple calculation, what would become of your
_internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus,
by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of
intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in
contemplating the operations passing in your mind--while there
is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one
day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the
stage."--P. 34.
They seem transferred to the stage already--so completely burlesqued is
the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does
not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember
previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual
effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no
difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being
much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of
objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them,
in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering,
in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness
to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate,
this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in
search--something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be
applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary
course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply
pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences;
observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but
which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human
being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology,
let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as
speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of
the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone
that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so
exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the
fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately
absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which
at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so
far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his
consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And
how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the
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