Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/164

154 to some account. Let us now, then, ask, depriving man of consciousness, What is it we actually leave him, and what is it we actually deprive him of? We leave him all that we have said. We leave him existence, and the performance of many operations, the greatest, as well as the most insignificant. But the existence thus left to him, together with all its phenomena, is, we beg it may be observed, only one species of existence. It is a peculiar kind of existence which must be noted well, and discriminated from existence of another species which we are about to mention. In a word, it is existence merely for others. This is what we leave man when we suppose him divested of consciousness.

And now we again ask, depriving man of consciousness, What do we really deprive him of? and we answer, that we totally deprive him of existence for himself; that is, we deprive him of that kind of existence in which alone he has any share, interest, or concern; or, in other words, by emptying him of consciousness, we take away from him altogether his personality, or his true and proper being. For of what importance is it to him that he should exist for others, and, for them, should evolve the most marvellous phenomena, if he exists not for himself, and takes no account of the various manifestations he displays? What reality can such a species of existence have for him? Obviously none. What can it avail a man to be and to act, if he remains all the while without consciousness of his Being and