Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/53

Rh, for it is manifested by all other beings as well as by him.

But when we turned from the universe to man, we found in him, besides reason, another fact, a phenomenon peculiarly his own—namely, the fact of consciousness. This, and this alone, is the fact which marks man off from all other things with a line of distinct and deep-drawn demarcation. This is the fact, out of which the second question which occupied us is to be answered. This is the fact, which reason falling in with, and doubling upon in man, becomes from that moment absolutely his own. This is the fact which bears us out in attributing our reason and all our actions to ourselves. By means of it we absolutely create for ourselves a personality to which we justly refer, and for which we lawfully claim, all our faculties, and all our doings. It is upon this fact, and not upon the fact of his reason, that civilised man has built himself up to be all that we now know and behold him to be. Freedom, law, morality, and religion have all their origin in this fact. In a word, it is in virtue of it that we are free, moral, social, and responsible beings.

On the other hand, look at the effect which the absence of this fact has upon the animal creation. Reason enters into the creatures there, just as it does into man, but not meeting with this fact, it merely impels them to accomplish their ends under the law of causality, and then running out, it leaves them just as it found them. They cannot detain it, or