LAWS OF MIND. 499 



seems to call up another by association, it is not really 

 a thought which recals a thought; the association did 

 not exist between the two thoughts, but between the 

 two states of the brain or nerves which preceded the 

 thoughts ; one of those states recals the other, each 

 being attended, in its passage, by the particular mental 

 state which is consequent upon it. On this theory, 

 the uniformities of succession among states of mind 

 would be mere derivative uniformities, resulting from 

 the laws of succession of the bodily states which cause 

 them. There would be no original mental laws, no 

 Laws of Mind in the sense in which I use the term, at 

 all ; but Mental Science would be a mere branch, 

 though the highest and most recondite branch, of the 

 Science of Physiology. , This is what M. Comte must 

 be understood to mean, when he claims the scientific 

 cognizance of moral and intellectual phenomena exclu- 

 sively for physiologists ; and not only denies to Psycho- 

 logy, or Mental Philosophy properly so called, the 

 character of a science, but places it, in the chimerical 

 nature of its objects and pretensions, almost on a par 

 with Astrology. 



But, after all has been said which can be said, it 

 remains incontestable by M. Comte and by all others, 

 that there do exist uniformities of succession among 

 states of mind, and that these can be ascertained by ob- 

 servation and experiment. Moreover, even if it were 

 rendered far more certain than I believe it as yet to 

 be, that every mental state has a nervous state for its 

 immediate antecedent and proximate cause ; yet every 

 one must admit that we are wholly ignorant of the 

 characteristics of these nervous states ; we know not, 

 nor can hope to know, in what respect one of them 

 differs from another; and our only mode of studying 

 their successions or coexistences must be by observing 



2 K 2 



