Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/207

Rh. But the act of contemplating our own phenomena unsystematically, is no other than our old friend, the act of consciousness; therefore the only distinction between philosophy and consciousness is, that the former is with system, and the latter without it. Thus, in attending to the fact which philosophy brings along with her, we find that consciousness and philosophy become identified; that philosophy is a systematic or studied consciousness, and that consciousness is an unsystematic or unstudied philosophy. But what do we here mean by the words systematic and unsystematic? These words signify only a greater and a less degree of clearness, expansion, strength, and exaltation. Philosophy possesses these in the higher degree, our ordinary consciousness in the lower degree. Thus philosophy is but a clear, an expanded, a strong, and an exalted consciousness; while, on the other hand, consciousness is an obscurer, a narrower, a weaker, and a less exalted philosophy. Consciousness is philosophy nascent; philosophy is consciousness in full bloom and blow. The difference between them is only one of degree, and not one of kind; and thus all conscious men are to a certain extent philosophers, although they may not know it.

But what comes of this? Whither do these observations tend? With what purport do we point out, thus particularly, the identity in kind between philosophy and the act of consciousness? Reader! if thou hast eyes to see, thou canst not fail to perceive (and