Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/109

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at what point shall Philosophy commence unwinding the coils of fatalism from around man? At the very outermost folds. To redeem man's moral being from slavery, and to circulate through it the air of liberty by which alone it lives, is the great end of philosophy; but it were vain to attempt the accomplishment of this end, unless the folds of necessity be first of all loosened at the very circumference or surface of his ordinary character as a simply percipient being. 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. We must commence, then, by liberating our ordinary