k. The love of system is always tending to prevail over the historical
investigation of the mind, which is our chief means of knowing it. It
equally tends to hinder the other great source of our knowledge of the
mind, the observation of its workings and processes which we can make for
ourselves.

l. The mind, when studied through the individual, is apt to be isolated--
this is due to the very form of the enquiry; whereas, in truth, it is
indistinguishable from circumstances, the very language which it uses being
the result of the instincts of long-forgotten generations, and every word
which a man utters being the answer to some other word spoken or suggested
by somebody else.

III. The tendency of the preceding remarks has been to show that
Psychology is necessarily a fragment, and is not and cannot be a connected
system. We cannot define or limit the mind, but we can describe it. We
can collect information about it; we can enumerate the principal subjects
which are included in the study of it. Thus we are able to rehabilitate
Psychology to some extent, not as a branch of science, but as a collection
of facts bearing on human life, as a part of the history of philosophy, as
an aspect of Metaphysic. It is a fragment of a science only, which in all
probability can never make any great progress or attain to much clearness
or exactness. It is however a kind of knowledge which has a great interest
for us and is always present to us, and of which we carry about the
materials in our own bosoms. We can observe our minds and we can
experiment upon them, and the knowledge thus acquired is not easily
forgotten, and is a help to us in study as well as in conduct.

The principal subjects of Psychology may be summed up as follows:--