Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/217

Rh labouring to bring out—namely, that human consciousness is, in every instance, an act of antagonism against some one or other of the given modifications of our natural existence—finds its strongest confirmation when we turn to the contemplation of the moral character of man. We have hitherto been considering consciousness chiefly in its relation to those modifications of our nature which are impressed upon us from without. We here found, that consciousness, when deeply scrutinised, is an act of opposition put forth against our sensations; that our sensations are invaded and impaired by an act of resistance which breaks up their monopolising dominion, and in the room of the sensation thus partially displaced, realises man's personality, a new centre of activity known to each individual by the name "I," a word which, when rightly construed, stands as the exponent of our violation of the causal nexus of nature, and of our consequent emancipation therefrom. The complex antithetical phenomenon in which this opposition