Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/246

236 must necessarily be a failure; and, sooner or later, a day of fearful retribution is sure to come, for the passions are real madmen, and consciousness is their only keeper; but man's born amiabilities are but painted masks, which (if consciousness has never occupied its post) are liable to be torn away from the face of his natural corruption, in any dark hour in which the passions may choose to break up from the dungeons of the heart.

The true philosopher is well aware that the gates of paradise are closed against him for ever upon earth. He does not, therefore, expend himself in a vain endeavour to force them, or to cultivate into a fake Eden the fictitious flowers of his own deceitful heart; but he seeks to compensate for this loss, and to restore to himself in some degree the perfected image of his Creator, by sternly laying waste, through consciousness, the wilderness of his own natural desires; for he well knows, that wherever he has extirpated a weed, there, and only there, will God plant a flower, or suffer it to grow. But the Epicurean, or fake philosopher, makes a direct assault upon the gates of paradise itself. He seeks to return straight into the arms of good, without fighting his way through the strong and innumerable forces of evil. He would reproduce the golden age, without directly confronting and resisting the ages of iron and of brass. By following the footsteps of nature, he imagines that he may be carried back into the paradise from which his forefather was cast forth. But, alas! it is not thus