Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/119

Rh yet is not a self at all, either in thought, in word, or deed? For let it be particularly noted that the notion of self is a great deal more than a mere notion,—that is to say, it possesses far more than a mere logical value and contents—it is absolutely genetic or creative. Thinking oneself "I" makes oneself "I;" and it is only by thinking himself "I" that a man can make himself "I; or, in other words, change an unconscious thing into that which is now a conscious self. Nothing else will or can do it. So long as a Being does not think itself "I," it does not and cannot become "I." No other being, no being except itself, can make it "I." More, however, of this hereafter.

But now mark the moment when the child pronounces the word "I," and knows what this expression means. Here is a new and most important step taken. Let no one regard this step as insignificant, or treat our mention of it lightly and superciliously; for, to say the least of it, it is a step the like of which in magnitude and wonder the human being never yet took, and never shall take again, throughout the whole course of his rational and immortal career. We have read in fable of Circæan charms, which changed men into brutes; but here in this little monosyllable is contained a truer and more potent charm, the spell of an inverted and unfabulous enchantment, which converts the feral into the human being. The origination of this little monosyllable lifts man out of the natural into the moral universe.