Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/184

174, whether the suffering be of pleasure or of pain, or of an indifferent cast. There is obviously nothing original or active connected with them. There is nothing in them except their own given contents, and these are entirely derivative. In the smell of a rose, for instance, there is nothing present except the smell of a rose. In a word, let us turn and twist, increase or diminish any sensation as we please, we can twist and turn it into nothing except the particular sensation which it is.

Let us suppose, then, a particular sensation to be impressed upon any of man's organs of sense; let us suppose it propagated forward along the nerves; let us trace it forth unto the brain; let us admit Hartley's or any other philosopher's "vibrations," "elastic medium," or "animal spirits," to be facts; and finally, let us suppose it, through the intervention of the one or other of these, landed and safely lodged in what metaphysicians are pleased to term the "mind;" still we maintain that, in spite of this circuitous operation, the man would remain utterly unconscious, and would not, in consequence of it, have any existence as "I" (the only kind of existence which properly concerns him), nor would the external object have any existence as an object for him. He would not perceive it, although sentient of it; the reason of which is, that perception implies an "I" and a "not I" a subject and object; and a subject and object involve a duality; and a duality presupposes an act of discrimination. But no act of