Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/199

Rh law man's natural being and all its modifications depend. But the life of the "I" depends upon the law of dissent, of resistance to all his natural or derivative states. And if the one of these laws, the law of assent, is known by the name of causality, the other of them, the law of dissent, which, in man, clashes with the law of causality at every point, is, or ought to be, known by the designation of will; and this will, this law of dissent, which embodies itself in an act of antagonism against the states which depend upon the law of causality, and which may therefore be called the law of freedom, as the other is the law of bondage, is the ground-law of humanity, and lies at the bottom of the whole operation of consciousness, at the roots, of the existence of the "I." Much more might be said concerning these two great laws, which may be best studied and understood in their opposition or conflict with one another.

But we have dug sufficiently deep downwards. It is now time that we should begin to dig upwards, and escape out of these mines of humanity, in which we have been working hard, although, we know, with most imperfect hands. We have trod, we trust with no unhallowed step, but with a foot venturous after truth, on the confines of those dread abysses which, in all ages, have shaken beneath the feet of the greatest thinkers among men. We have seen and handled the dark ore of humanity in its pure and elemental state. It will be a comparatively