Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/214

204 act by which man becomes man in the first instance, and by the incessant performance of which he preserves his moral status, and prevents himself from falling back into the causal bondage of nature, which is at all times too ready to reclaim him; and, therefore, philosophy, which is but a higher phase of consciousness, is seen to be an act of a still higher practical character. Now, the whole of this vindication of the practical character of philosophy is evidently based upon her abandonment of the physical method, upon her turning away from the given facts of man to the contemplation of a fact which is not given in his natural being, but which philosophy herself contributes to her own construction and to man, namely, the act itself of philosophising, or, in simple language, the act of consciousness. This fact cannot possibly be given: for we have seen that all the given facts of man's being necessarily tend to suppress it; and therefore (as we have also seen) it is, and must be a free and underived, and not in any conceivable sense a ready-made fact of humanity.

Thus, then, we see that philosophy, when she gets her due—when she deals fairly with man, and when man deals fairly by her—in short, when she is rightly represented and understood, loses her merely theoretical complexion, and becomes identified with all the best practical interests of our living selves. She no longer stands aloof from humanity, but, descending into this world's arena, she takes an active part in the ongoings of busy life. Her dead symbols