ch perception (present and remembered) has
been withdrawn. An impotence of the mind does indeed apparently resolve
the supposed synthesis: but essential thinking exposes the imposition,
restores the divided elements to their pristine integrity, and
extinguishes the theory which would explain the _datum_ by means of the
concurrence of a subjective or mental, and an objective or material
factor. The convicted weakness of psychology is thus the root which
gives strength to metaphysic. The failure of psychology affords to
metaphysic a foundation of adamant. And perhaps no better or more
comprehensive description of the object of metaphysical or speculative
philosophy could be given than this,--that it is a science which exists,
and has at all times existed, chiefly for the purpose of exposing the
vanity and confounding the pretensions of what is called the "science of
the human mind." The turning-round of thought from psychology to
metaphysic is the true interpretation of the Platonic conversion of the
soul from ignorance to knowledge--from mere opinion to certainty and
satisfaction: in other words, from a discipline in which the thinking is
only _apparent_, to a discipline in which the thinking is _real_.
Ordinary observation does not reveal to us the real, but only the
apparent revolutions of the celestial orbs. We must call astronomy to
our aid if we would reach the truth. In the same way, ordinary or
psychological thinking may show us the apparent movements of
thought--but it is powerless to decipher the real figures described in
that mightier than planetary scheme. Metaphysic alone can teach us to
read aright the intellectual skies. Psychology regards the universe of
thought from the Ptolemaic point of view, making man, as this system
made the earth, the centre of the whole: metaphysic regards it from the
Copernican point of view, making God, as this scheme makes the sun, the
regulating principle of all. The difference is as great between "the
science of the human mind" and metaphysic, as it is between the
Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomy, and it is very much of the same
kind.

But the opposition between psychology and metaphysic, which we would at
present confine ourselves to the consideration of, is this:--the
psychological blindness consists in supposing that the analysis so often
referred to is practicable, and has been made out: the metaphysical
insight consists in seeing that the analysis is null and imprac