Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/65

Rh ourselves exclusively with the man and his facts, we shall see whether the science will not float them. But our first problem is to vindicate and make good the distinction we have pointed out.

Before going further, let us make use of an illustration, which will, perhaps, be of some preliminary assistance in rendering our meaning, together with the point at issue, still more distinct and manifest to the reader. The mountains, let us say, which the eye beholds are the objects of its vision. In the same way the passions, sensations, "states of mind," &c., which the man is, or may be, conscious of, are the objects of his consciousness, of his conscious self. But no one ever supposes that the fact of vision is the same as the objects of vision. The former appertains to the eye; the latter constitute the mountains seen. The objects of vision may exist and do exist without the fact of vision, and do not create or enforce this fact as their necessary and invariable accompaniment. To make no discrimination between these two things would be confessedly in the highest degree absurd. It is just the same with regard to the fact of consciousness and the objects of consciousness. The fact of consciousness belongs to the man himself, to that being which calls itself "I;" and this, truly speaking, is all that belongs to him. The objects of consciousness, namely, man's passions, sensations, &c., are not, properly speaking, his at all. The fact and notion of self do not necessarily or always accompany them. They may be referred to "mind," or to what you