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In the preceding chapter we have applied the principles of common sense to gain evidence of the existence of a Creator, or Great First Cause, whose natural attributes we can discover only by the nature of our own minds.

This being so, our next step in seeking after God is to examine the construction or nature of our own minds.

The only way to discover the nature of a thing is to examine what are its qualities, how it acts, and how it is acted upon. This also is the same as studying the philosophy of things. For when learned men set forth any branch of philosophy, they only teach the qualities of certain things, how they act, and how they are acted upon.

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Whoever, therefore, gives attention to the nature of mind so as to discover its qualities, how it acts, and how it is acted upon, is studying the philosophy of mind, or mental philosophy.

The nature of mind, the philosophy of mind, and mental philosophy are terms all expressing the same thing.

Now, the only possible way in which any person can discover the nature of another mind is by a knowledge of his own. We first learn by experience the qualities of our own mind, how it acts and how it is acted upon, and then, by a process of reasoning, we learn that there are other minds around us, and that they have similar qualities.

The study of mental philosophy, then, is directing attention to the nature of our own mind, and thus discovering the nature of other minds.

It differs from all other studies in this respect, that all men have the materials of the knowledge sought in their own minds, and are required simply to direct attention to their own mental states and acts.

This being so, the common people are as fully qualified to settle all questions in regard to the nature or philosophy of their own minds as the most learned and profound metaphysicians or theologians can be. All that is requisite to success is, that they direct their attention to the subject by suitable methods.

It will be found, on examination, that the common people have secured a written system of mental philosophy as real as has ever yet been furnished by any metaphysician or theologian, while it is free from the great defects which render many works on mental science unpractical and repulsive.

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This—the people's system of mental philosophy—it will be the object of what follows to set forth.

In attempting it, we shall find that mankind, in the uses of every-day life, have arranged the various acts and states of mind into classes and subdivisions, and have given names to these classes, and to the specific acts or states included in these classes. These classifications and terms are recorded by lexicographers in their dictionaries.

All words have that meaning which is attached to them by the people who use them. The business of the lexicographer is, not to settle what meaning ought to belong to words, but rather to state the meaning which men actually attach to them in writing and speaking.

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 [pg 053] 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 [pg 054] understand them, or to find any person who could communicate any clear ideas of their contents.