Psychology the Cognitive Powers Author:James McCosh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: two are correlates of one another, that they are two sides or aspects of one and the same thing. But can we attach any meaning to what we say when we describe th... more »ought as a side or aspect of a stone or of an acid or a piece of timber ? Just as little can we understand or conceive that our musings, our fancies, our resolutions should have solidity, durability, elasticity, hardness, softness, porosity, pressure, gravity. We thus know them as different things and should so investigate them, and seek to determine the properties of each. We may afterwards inquire into their points of connection. SECTION JJI. CAUTIONS TO BE ATTENDED TO IN THE STUDY OF THE MIND. (1.) Certain ideas must be left behind. — We must not take materialistic conceptions with us into psychology. In the natural history of the mind things without us are noticed before the things within us. We are in consequence exposed to a temptation in beginning in youth or mature age the discussion of psychical questions: we apply ideas got from matter to mind. We need to guard .against this. Thus we are not to allow ourselves to look on mind itself or any of its operations as occupying space, as extended, or as having figure, as having weight or levity, height or depth, elevation or depression, attraction or repulsion, solidity or elasticity, motion or rest, light or darkness, warmth or frigidity. We have come to an entirely new country, and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the people, to their laws and customs, and in particular we have to learn their language. (2.) We have to beware of the misleading influence of anguage derived from material objects. — As the individ aal looks without before he pays special regard to the mind, so in the natural history of society there is an acquaintance with physical ...« less