Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/24

14 no freedom of action, because he believes himself to have none. He views himself but as "dust in the wind" and viewing himself thus, he becomes, in practice, the worthless thing which in theory he dreams himself to be. Fatalism, too, has ever been the creed of usurpers; and they have ever made it their apology also in their strivings after more tyrannical rule. Did conscience for a moment cross the path of these scourges of the earth, it was brushed aside with the salving dogma that man is but a machine in the hands of a higher power. Napoleon, in his own eyes, was but a phantom of terror shaped on the battle-field, by the winds of circumstance, out of the thunder-smoke of his own desolating wars; and, with this reflection, his enslaving arm was loosed more fiercely than before. Finally, through inattention to the true phenomena of man, we may be misled into all the errors of Rochefoucauld. And here our errors will not stop at their theoretical stage. In order to prove our creed to be correct, we must, and will ere long, make our own characters correspond with his model of man, believing it to be the true one.

Such and so great is the peril to which we are exposed in our practical characters, as well as in our speculative beliefs, from any oversight committed in studying the phenomena of ourselves. There is no call upon any man to observe these phenomena. Sufficient in general for his day are the troubles thereof, without this additional source of perplexity.