Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/160

150 heretofore. But what difference would the absence of consciousness make in the condition of man? Little or none, we reply, in the eyes of a spectator ab extra. In the eyes of a Being different from man, and who regards him, we shall suppose, from some other sphere, man's ongoings without consciousness would be the same, or nearly the same, as they were with consciousness. Such a Being would occupy precisely the same position towards the unconscious man as the conscious man at present holds towards the unconscious objects of creation; that is to say, man would still exist for this Being, and for him would evolve all his varied phenomena. We are not to suppose that man in this case would be cut off from any of those sources of inspiration which make him a rational, a passionate, a sentient, and an imaginative creature. On the contrary, by reason of the very absence of consciousness, the flood-gates of his being would stand wider than before, and let in upon him stronger and deeper currents of inspiration. He would still be visited by all his manifold sensations, and by all the effects they bring along with them; he would still be the creature of pleasure and of pain; his emotions and desires would be the same as ever, or even more overwhelming; he would still be the inspired slave of all his soft and all his sanguinary passions; for, observe, we are not supposing him deprived of any of these states of being, but only of the consciousness, or reference to self, of them—only of that notion and reality of self which generally accompanies them; a partial curtailment perfectly