Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/134

124 We now avail ourselves of the assistance of this antagonism, which has thus been established as fact by experience, in order to displace the false fact generally, we might say universally, assumed in our current metaphysics—namely, that consciousness, or the fact and notion denoted by the word "I," comes into manifestation at the bidding, and under the influence, of the objects which induce the sensations accompanying it.

One fact admitted on all hands is, that our sensations are caused by certain objects presented to our senses; another fact assumed on all hands is, that our consciousness of sensations falls under the same law, and is likewise induced by the presence of these objects. But consciousness and sensation are each other's opposites, and exist as thesis and antithesis; therefore, according to this doctrine, we find two contradictory effects attributed at the same moment to the same cause, and referred to the same origin, just as if we were to affirm that the same object is at the same moment and in the same place the cause at once of light and of the absence of light, or that the sun at one and the same instant both ripens fruit and prevents it from ripening. To illustrate this by our former example (for a variety of illustrations adds nothing to the clearness of an exposition), let us suppose a sentient being to experience the smell of a rose. So long as this being's state is simply sentient, its sensation is absorbing, effective, and complete; but as soon as consciousness, or the realisation of self,