s for the
purpose of extirpating, if possible, any lingering prejudice which may
still lurk in the reader's mind in favour of the psychological
partition.

According to metaphysic, the perception of matter is not the whole
given fact with which we have to deal in working out this problem--(it
is not the whole given fact; for, as we have said, our apprehension of,
or participation in, the perception of matter--this is the whole given
fact);--but the perception of matter is the _whole objective_ part of
the given fact. But it will, perhaps, be asked--Are there not here two
given facts? Does not the perception of matter imply two _data_? Is not
the perception one given fact, and is not the matter itself another
given fact--and are not these two facts perfectly distinct from one
another? No: it is the false analysis of psychologists which we have
already exposed that deceives us. But there is another circumstance
which, perhaps, contributes more than any thing else to assist and
perpetuate our delusion. This is the construction of language. We shall
take this opportunity to put the student of philosophy upon his guard
against its misleading tendency.

People imagine that because two (or rather three) words are employed to
denote the fact, (the perception of matter,) that therefore there are
two separate facts and thoughts corresponding to these separate words.
But it is a great mistake to suppose that the analysis of facts and
thoughts necessarily runs parallel with the analysis of sounds. Man, as
Homer says, is [Greek: merops], or a word-divider; and he often carries
this propensity so far as to divide words where there is no
corresponding division of thoughts or of things. This is a very
convenient practice, in so far as the ordinary business of life is
concerned: for it saves much circumlocution, much expenditure of sound.
But it runs the risk of making great havoc with scientific thinking; and
there cannot be a doubt that it has helped to confirm psychology in its
worst errors, by leading the unwary thinker to suppose that he has got
before him a complete fact or thought, when he has merely got before him
a complete word. There are whole words which, taken by themselves, have
no thoughts or things corresponding to them, any more than there are
thoughts and things corresponding to each of the separate syllables of
which these words are composed. The words "perception" and "matter" are
cases in point. These words have n