Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 043.djvu/470

446 pole where consciousness abides, and vested entirely in the opposite pole where passion dwells; or rather we should say that as a man he is extinct, and lives only as a machine. In both of these cases the men lose their personality. They are played upon by a foreign agency.

But as yet they know not how mean and how miserable they are. Consciousness must return to them first, and only they themselves can bring it back; and when it does return, the effect of its very first approach is to lower the temperature of the sensation and of the passion. The men are not now wholly absorbed in the state that prevailed at the sensual and passionate pole. 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.

The first general expression, then, of this great law (which, however, may require much minute attention to calculate all its subordinate forces and their precise balances) is this:—When passion, or any state of mind at the one pole, is at its maximum, consciousness is at its minimum—this maximum being sometimes so great as absolutely to extinguish consciousness while it continues; and, vice versa, when consciousness is at its maximum, the passion, or whatever the state of mind at the opposite pole may be, is at its minimum—the maximum being in this case, too, sometimes so great as to amount to a total suspension of the passion, &c. What important consequences does the mere enunciation of this great law suggest! In particular, what a firm and intelligible basis does it afford to the great superstructure of morality! What light does it carry down into the profoundest recesses of duty! Man's passions may be said to be the origin of all human wickedness. What more important fact, then, can there be than this, that the very act of consciousness, simple as it may seem, brings along with it, to a considerable extent, the suspension of any passion which may be tyrannizing over us; and that, as the origination of this act is our own, so is it in our own power to heighten and increase its lustre as we please, even up to the highest degree of self-reflection, where it triumphs over passion completely? These matters, however, shall be more fully unfolded when we come to speak of the consequences of the fact of consciousness.