Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/241

Rh upon us, we, properly speaking, are the cause by which it is induced to visit and operate upon us at all. "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force:" that is to say, it does not take them by force; it does not force itself causally upon us. On the contrary, we must force ourselves upon it by our own efforts, and, as it were, wring from an All-merciful God that grace which even He cannot and will not grant, except to our own most earnest importunities.

Would we now look back into the history of our kind, in order to gather instances of that real operation of consciousness which we have been speaking of? Then what was the whole of the enlightened jurisprudence, and all the high philosophy of antiquity, but so many indications of consciousness in its practical antagonism against human depravity? What is justice, that source and concentration of all law? Is it a natural growth or endowment of humanity? Has it, in its first origin, a positive character of its own? No; there is no such thing as natural or born justice among men. Justice is nothing but the consciousness of our own natural injustice, this consciousness being, in its very essence, an act of resistance against the same. Do the promptings of nature teach us to give every man his due? No; the promptings of nature teach us to keep to ourselves all that we can lay our hands upon; therefore it is only by acting against the promptings of nature