Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/142

132 upon me, that "I," in truth, only am by resisting and refusing to be impressed by their action.

When an effect or impression is produced on any substance, whether it be motion, as in the case of a struck billiard-ball, or sensation, as in the case of animals and men, the substance impressed is either conscious of the impression, as is the case with men, or unconscious of it, as is the case with animals and billiard-balls. If it be unconscious of the impression, then, being filled and monopolised by the same, it never rises above it, but, yielding to its influence, it becomes altogether the slave of the law of causality, or of the force that is working on it. But if this substance be conscious of the impression made upon it, then it is absolutely necessary, in the eye of reason, that a portion of this being should stand aloof from the impression, should be exempt from the action of the object causing it; in short, should resist, repel, and deny it in the exercise of a free activity; otherwise, like animals and inferior things, being completely absorbed and monopolised by the influence present to it, it would no more be able to become conscious of it than a leaf can comprehend the gale in which it is drifting along, or the tiger the passion which impels him to slake his burning heart in blood. It is obvious that the point in man at which he becomes aware of his impressions must be free from these impressions, and must stand out of their sphere, otherwise it would be swallowed up by them, and nothing save the impressions would