Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/153

Rh mists, an earlier time, when thy consciousness was altogether null; a time when the discrimination of thy sensations into subject and object, which seems so ordinary and inevitable a process to thee now, had not taken place, but when thyself and nature were enveloped and fused together in a glowing and indiscriminate synthesis. In these days thy state was indeed blessed, but it was the blessedness of bondage. The earth flattered thee, and the smiling heavens flattered thee into forgetfulness. Thou wert nature's favourite, but at the same time her fettered slave.

But thy destiny was to be free; to free thyself; to break asunder the chains of nature, to oppose thy will and thy strength to the universe, both without thee and within thee, to tread earth and the passions of earth beneath thy feet; and thy first step towards this great consummation was to dissolve the strong, primary, and natural synthesis of sensation. In the course of time, then, that which was originally one in the great unity of nature, became two beneath the first exercise of a reflective analysis. Thy sensation was now divided into subject and object; that is, thyself and the universe around thee. Now, for the first time, wert thou "I."

Wouldst thou re-examine thy sensation as it exists in its primary synthetic state? Then look at it; what is it but a pure unmixed sensation, a sensation, and nothing more? Wouldst thou behold it, in thy own secondary analysis of it? then, lo! how a new element, altogether transcending mere sensation, is