Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/233



argument, in the foregoing part of our discussion (in which we showed that morality is grounded in an antagonism carried on between our nature and our consciousness), is obviously founded on the assumption that man is born in weakness and depravity. We need hardly, nowadays, insist on the natural sinfulness of the human heart, which we are told by our own, and by all recorded experience, as well as by a higher authority than that of man, is desperately wicked, and runneth to evil continually. Deplorable as this fact is, deplorably also and profusely has it been lamented. We are not now, therefore, going to swell this deluge of lamentations. Instead of doing so, let us rather endeavour to review dispassionately the fact of our naturally depraved condition, in order to ascertain, if possible, the precise bearing which it has on the development and