Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/38

28 insufficiency of this view, would require a separate discussion, involving the real, and not the mere logical bearings of the question. This is what we are not at liberty to go into at present We are confining ourselves as much as possible to the mere language of metaphysical inquiry; I, therefore, content myself with answering, that if by reason is meant conscious or reflective reason, and if this is held to be identical with mind, of course, in that case, mind is necessarily conscious of its own changes. But such reason is not one phenomenon but two phenomena, which admit of very easy discrimination, and which are often to be found actually discriminated both in ourselves and in the universe around us. Reason, taken singly, and viewed by its own light, is a mere 'state of mind' in which there is nothing, any more than there is in the 'states of matter,' to countenance the presumption that it should take cognisance of its own operation; a priori, there is no more ground for supposing that 'reason,' 'feeling,' 'passion,' and 'states of mind' whatsoever, should be conscious of themselves, than that thunder and lightning, and all the changes of the atmosphere should. Mind, endow it with as much reason as you please, is still perfectly conceivable as existing in all its varying moods, without being, at the same time, at all conscious of them. Many creatures are rational without being conscious; therefore human consciousness can never be explained out of human reason."

"All I suppose, then, that can be said about the