Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/107

Rh 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! as long as life lasts, the harsher soil of thy own tumultuous and almost ungovernable heart.

This creed is none of nature's prompting, but is the issue of a veritable contest now set on foot between man and her. But how is this creed to be supported? How can we rationally make good the fact that we are fighting all life long more or less against the powers of nature? We have flung aside the logic of physics; where shall we look for props?

Here it is that philosophy comes in. "The flowers of thy happiness," says she, "are withered. They could not last; they gilded but for a day the opening portals of life. But in their place I will give thee freedom's flowers. 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,