James Frederick Ferrier

“ In studying "the human mind," we encounter, whichever way we turn, mere counterfeit, or else irrelevant phenomena, instead of falling in with the true and peculiar phenomena of man; or shall we say that consciousness, like the apples in the gardens of the Hesperides, grows on the boughs of humanity, and grows nowhere else, and that while it is the practical duty of all men, as well as the great aim of philosophy, to grasp and realise this rare and precious fact, it has ever been the practice of "the human mind," like the dragon of old, to guard this phenomena from the scrutiny of mankind ”

“ Like a treacherous warrior, who, after having conquered the whole world in his country's cause, returns to enslave the land that gave him birth, Science, coming home laden with the spoils of the universe, will turn her arms against him whose banner she bore, and in whose service she fought and triumphed. By benumbing a vitality she cannot grasp, and by denying or passing by, blindly or in perplexity, a freedom she can neither realise nor explain, she will do her best to bring him under the dominion of the well-known laws which the rest of the universe obeys. ”

“ She may introduce the causal nexus into thought, and call the result "association." But the man himself is not to be found in this "calculating machine." He, with all his true phenomena, has burst alive from under her petrific hand, and leaves her grasping "airy nothings," not even the shadow of that which she is striving to comprehend; for, though she can soar the solar height, and gaze unblinded on the stars, man soars higher still, and, in his lofty region, she has got waxen wings, that fall to pieces in the blaze of the brighter sun of human freedom. ”

“ She tells thee, O man! that thou art but an animal of a higher and more intelligent class; a mere link, though perhaps a bright one, in the uninterrupted chain of creation. No clog art thou, she says, in the revolutions of the blind and mighty wheel. She lays her hand upon thee, and thou, falling into her ranks, goest to swell the legions of dependent things, the leader, it may be, but not the antagonist of nature. She bends thee down under the law of causality, and, standing in her muster-roll, thou art forced to acknowledge that law as the sovereign of thy soul. ”

“ The balance is beginning to right itself. They have originated an act of their own, which has given them some degree of freedom; and they now begin to look down upon their former state as upon a state of intolerable slavery; and ever as this self-reference of theirs waxes, they look down upon that state as more and more slavish still, until at length, the balance being completely reversed and lying over on the other side, consciousness is again enthroned, the passion and the sensation are extinguished, and the men feel themselves to be completely free. ”

“ Long as the sun shone, their love basked beautiful beneath it, and wore smiles of eternal constancy; but when the storm arose, then Hatred, which had been overlooked by Consciousness, arose also, and the place of Love knew it no more. Justice worked well so long as every one got what he himself wanted. But no sooner were the desires of any man thwarted, than Injustice, which Consciousness had laid no restraint upon, stretched out her hand and snatched the gratification of them ”

“ Active processes are everywhere going on; and throughout the length and breadth of creation there is a constant succession of changes. The whole earth is, indeed, teeming with every form and every colour of existence; and that enjoyment is there too, who can doubt when spring is in the air, and the lark singing in the cloud?
Here, then, we have a creation brimful of activity and life, and no pause in all its vigorous and multifarious ongoings. What is there, then, in man which is not to be found here also, and even in greater and more perfect abundance? Is it intelligence? Is it reason? ”

“ Thus, then, we see that philosophy, when she gets her due—when she deals fairly with man, and when man deals fairly by her—in short, when she is rightly represented and understood, loses her merely theoretical complexion, and becomes identified with all the best practical interests of our living selves. She no longer stands aloof from humanity, but, descending into this world's arena, she takes an active part in the ongoings of busy life. Her dead symbols burst forth into living realities; the dry rustling twigs of science become clothed with all the verdure of the spring. ”

“ In revealing to man the strife, which, in the very act of consciousness, exists between himself and his whole natural man, philosophy, of course, brings him to entertain the desire that this strife should be composed. But the desire that this strife should be composed, is itself nothing but a seeking of the kingdom of heaven. It is no desire on man's part to give up the fight, to abandon the resistance of evil, but it is a determination to carry this resistance to its uttermost issues, and then, through Divine assistance, to get this resistance embodied in positive and enduring good. ”

“ These passions, like our sensations, monopolise the man, and cannot endure that anything should infringe their dominion. So far from helping to realise our personality, they do everything in their power to keep it aloof or in abeyance, and to lull man into oblivion—of himself. So far from coming into life, our personality tends to disappear, and, like water torn and beaten into invisible mist by the force of a whirlwind, it often entirely vanishes beneath the tread of the passions. Then comes reason; and perhaps you imagine that reason elevates us to the rank of personal beings. ”

“ What can it avail a man to be and to act, if he remains all the while without consciousness of his Being and his actions? In short, divested of consciousness, is it not plain that a man is no longer "I," or self, and, in such circumstances, must not his existence, together with all its ongoings, be, in so far as he is concerned, absolutely zero, or a blank?
Thus existence becomes discriminated into two distinct species, which, though they may be found together, as they usually are in man, are yet perfectly separate and distinguishable; existence, namely, for others, and existence for oneself. ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty, that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ Look at a human being immersed in the swinish gratifications of sense. See here how completely the man is lost in the animal. Swallowed up in the pleasurable sensations of his palate, he is oblivious of everything else, and consciousness sinks into abeyance for a time. The sensation at the one pole monopolises him, and therefore the consciousness at the other pole does not come into play. He does not think of himself; he does not combine the notion of himself with the sensation, the enjoyment of which is enslaving him. ”

“ For common sense, being instinctive or nearly so, rarely errs; and its expressions, not being matured by reflection, generally contain within them, though under very obscure forms, much of the deep truth and wisdom of revelations. What though its facts and its language may often be to us, like the mirage to travellers in the desert, for a time an illusive and disappointing thing? Still let us persevere in the pursuit. The natural mirage is often the most benign provision which Heaven, in its mercy, could call up before the eyes of the wanderers through barren wastes. ”

“ For consciousness is no dream, no theory; it is no lesson taught in the schools, and confined within their walls; it is not a system remote from the practical pursuits and interests of humanity; but it has its proper place of abode upon the working theatre of living men. It is a real, and often a bitter struggle on the part of each of us against the fatalistic forces of our nature, which are at all times seeking to enslave us. The causality of nature, both without us, and especially within us, strikes deep roots, and works with a deep intent. ”

“ If we admit the logic we must admit the creed, and if we admit the creed we must admit the logic; but let us tear both of them in pieces, and scatter their fragments to the winds. The creed of nature concludes simply for enjoyment; but the truer creed of human life, a creed which says little about happiness, was uttered soon after the foundations of the world were laid, and has been proved and perpetuated by the experience of six thousand years. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou cultivate the earth;" and, it may be added, in a bitterer sweat shalt thou till, oh man! ”

“ In ourselves, as well as in nature, a certain given series of phenomena is presented to our observation, but in studying the objects of nature, we add no new phenomenon to the phenomena already there; whereas, on the contrary, in studying ourselves we do add a new phenomenon to the other phenomena of our being; we add, to wit, the fact that we are thus studying ourselves. Be this new phenomenon important or unimportant, it is, at any rate, evident that in it is violated the analogy between physics and philosophy, between the study of man and the study of nature. ”

“ Even as it is, nothing can be more wonderful than that he should evolve this antagonist power in the very heart of the floods of sensation which, pouring in upon all sides, are incessantly striving to overwhelm it; and secure in its strength, should ride, as in a lifeboat, amid all the whirlpools of blind and fatalistic passion, which make the life of every man here below a sea of roaring troubles. ”

“ But still, with all this, it is what may be termed but a one-sided universe. Under one view it is filled to the brim with life and light; under another view it is lying within the very blackest shadow of darkness and of death. The first view is a true one, because all the creatures it contains are, indeed, alive, and, revelling in existence, put forth the most wonderful manifestations of reason. ”

“ To act according to thy inclinations may be enjoyment; but know that to act against them is liberty, and thou only actest thus because thou art really free. For thy freedom does not merely consist in the power to follow a certain course, or to leave it unfollowed, but it properly consists in the single course of originating a new movement running counter to all the biases which nature gives thee, and in rising superior to the bondage thou wert born in. I will unwind from around thee, fold after fold, the coils of the inert logic of causality ”

“ For what act can be more vitally practical than the act by which we realise our existence as free personal beings? and what act can be attended by a more practical result than the act by which we look our passions in the face, and, in the very act of looking at them, look them down?
Now, if consciousness be an act of such mighty and practical efficiency in real life, what must not the practical might and authority of philosophy be? Philosophy is consciousness sublimed. ”

“ The child is driven to the gratification of its desires (prior to consciousness) at whatever cost, and whatever the consequences may be, just as an animal or a machine is impelled to accomplish the work for which it was designed; and the desire dies only when gratified, or when its natural force is spent, or when supplanted by some other desire equally blind and equally out of its control. How can we affix the epithet selfish, or any other term indicating either blame or praise, to a creature which as yet is not a self at all, either in thought, in word, or deed? ”

“ In truth, possessing this fact, we hold in our hands the profoundest truth in all psychology, the most awful and sublime truth connected with the nature of man. Our present mention of it is necessarily very brief and obscure: but we will do our best to clear it up and expound it fully when we come to discuss the problem: How does consciousness come into operation? We will then start man free. We will show that he brings himself into existence, not indeed as a being, but as a human being; not as an existence, but as an existence calling itself "I," by an act of absolute and essential freedom. ”

“ We have divided man's existence into two distinct species, one of which—that, namely, which we may now call his natural existence—was found to be given and to precede the act of consciousness. Now, does not this act naturally spring out of that existence? Is it not dependent upon it? Is it not a mere development from a seed sown in man's natural being; and does it not unfold itself, after a time, like any other natural germ or faculty of humanity? ”

“ It is now time that we should begin to dig upwards, and escape out of these mines of humanity, in which we have been working hard, although, we know, with most imperfect hands. We have trod, we trust with no unhallowed step, but with a foot venturous after truth, on the confines of those dread abysses which, in all ages, have shaken beneath the feet of the greatest thinkers among men. We have seen and handled the dark ore of humanity in its pure and elemental state. ”

“ Make man, ab origine, like wax beneath the seal, the passive recipient of the impressions of external things, and a slave he must remain for ever in all the phenomena he may manifest throughout the whole course of his career. If there be bondage in his common consciousness, it must necessarily pass into his moral conscience. Unless our first and simplest consciousness be an act of freedom, our moral being is a bondsman all its life. True philosophy will accept of no half measures, no compromise between the passivity and the activity of man. ”

“ Push speculation to its uttermost limits, and error is impossible, if we have attended rigidly to the facts which philosophy reveals to us: overlook perhaps but a single fact, and our reason, otherwise our faithful minister, and truly a heap of untold treasure, may be converted into a brood of fiends to baffle and destroy us.
The whole history of science shows that it is inattention to the phenomena manifested, and nothing else, which, in all ages, has been the fruitful mother of errors in the philosophy of man. ”

“ As life advances, the garden of nature becomes more and more a howling wilderness, and nature's passions and indulgences blacken her own shining skies: and before our course is run, life, under her guidance, has become a spectacle of greater ghastliness than death itself.
Nature prompts a purely epicurean creed, and the logic of physical science binds it down upon the understandings of men; for suppose that we should turn and fight against the force that drives us. But how can we? says the logic of physics. ”

“ Nature works beautifully, but blindly and without reflection. Thou must work, it may be with pain and difficulty, but, at the same time, with a seeing soul, and a full consciousness of what thou art about. Nature fills thy heart with passions, and tells it to find its happiness in giving way to them. But, out of consciousness, conscience has germinated ”

“ But if by reason is meant (and nothing else can be meant by it) the power of adapting means to the production of ends, skill and success in scientific contrivances, or in the beautiful creations of art, then the exclusive appropriation of reason to man is at once negatived and put to shame by the facts which nature displays. For how far is human intelligence left behind in many things by the sagacity of brutes, and by the works which they accomplish! What human geometer can build like a bird its airy cradle, or like the bee her waxen cells? ”

“ The metaphysician resembles the analytic poulterer who slew it to get at them in a lump, and found nothing for his pains. Leave the mind to its own natural workings, as manifested in the imagination of the poet, the fire and rapid combinations of the orator, the memory of the mathematician, the gigantic activities and never-failing resources of the warrior and statesman, or even the manifold powers put forth in everyday life by the most ordinary of men ”

“ How are we assured of the reality of an external world? asks the philosophy of scepticism. Through the senses, answers the philosophy of faith. But are not the senses themselves a part of the external universe? and is not this answer, therefore, equivalent to saying that we become assured of the reality of the external universe through the external universe? or, in other words, is not this solution of the question a direct taking-for-granted of the very matter in dispute? ”

“ Whatever might be its value in other respects, we aver that, as a science of man, it would be altogether worthless and false. And for this reason, because the object of our research here not only does not contain the proper and peculiar fact of man, namely, the fact of consciousness, but it contains, as we have seen, an order of phenomena which tend unceasingly to overcloud, keep down, and extinguish this fact. In studying this object, therefore, with the view of constructing a science of man out of our examination of it, we should be following a course doubly vicious and misleading. ”