Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/168

158 The one-sided existence has become doubled. He no longer exists merely for others; he exists also for himself, a very different and, for him, a much more important matter.

Existence for oneself, then, personal existence, or, in other words, that species of Being which alone properly concerns man, is found not to precede, but to follow the act of consciousness; therefore the next fact of humanity to which we beg to call very particular attention is this: that man, properly speaking, acts before he exists; for consciousness is, as we have already shown, and will show still further, a pure act, and partakes in no degree of the nature of a passion. At the same time, the proof that consciousness is of this character will convince us that it cannot have its origin in the first-mentioned and given species of existence, which we have called existence for others, or existence without consciousness. But this is not the place for that proof. It will be attempted by-and-by.

This fact, that man acts before he truly and properly exists, may perhaps at first sight appear rather startling, and maybe conceived to be at direct variance with what are called "the laws of human thought;" for it may be said that these laws compel us to conceive man in Being before we can conceive him in act. But if it should be really found to be thus at variance with these laws, our only answer is, that facts are "stubborn things," and that we do not care one straw for the laws of human thought when