system, we discover that the links by which we combine them are apt to be
mere words. We are in a country which has never been cleared or surveyed;
here and there only does a gleam of light come through the darkness of the
forest.

(2) These fragments, although they can never become science in the ordinary
sense of the word, are a real part of knowledge and may be of great value
in education. We may be able to add a good deal to them from our own
experience, and we may verify them by it. Self-examination is one of those
studies which a man can pursue alone, by attention to himself and the
processes of his individual mind. He may learn much about his own
character and about the character of others, if he will 'make his mind sit
down' and look at itself in the glass. The great, if not the only use of
such a study is a practical one,--to know, first, human nature, and,
secondly, our own nature, as it truly is.

(3) Hence it is important that we should conceive of the mind in the
noblest and simplest manner. While acknowledging that language has been
the greatest factor in the formation of human thought, we must endeavour to
get rid of the disguises, oppositions, contradictions, which arise out of
it. We must disengage ourselves from the ideas which the customary use of
words has implanted in us. To avoid error as much as possible when we are
speaking of things unseen, the principal terms which we use should be few,
and we should not allow ourselves to be enslaved by them. Instead of
seeking to frame a technical language, we should vary our forms of speech,
lest they should degenerate into formulas. A difficult philosophical
problem is better understood when translated into the vernacular.

I.a. Psychology is inseparable from language, and early language contains
the first impressions or the oldest experience of man respecting himself.