Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/66

56 please. They are indeed within the man's control, and it is his duty to control them. But this is not because they are himself, but only because they are not himself; because they are obscurations of himself. You may call them the false man if you choose; but if they were the true man, where would be the truthfulness of that mighty truth which says that the man waxes just in proportion as he makes his passions and his sensual feelings wane? How could this be the case if the man himself were identical with his passions and his desires? Can a creature live and thrive by suspending its own animation? Is it conceivable that a being should increase and strengthen in proportion as it is weakened and diminished? To return to our illustration: the point of it is this—the objects of consciousness, namely, the passions, emotions, &c., and Reason itself, might perfectly well exist (and in animals do exist) without any one being conscious of them, or combining with them the notion of self, just as the objects of vision exist without any eye perceiving them: and the fact of consciousness, or the fact that a being is conscious of these states, is just as distinct from the states themselves as the fact that the eye does behold mountains is distinct from the mountains which it beholds. These two things, then, the fact and the object, are in both cases distinctly separate. In the case of the eye and its objects they are never confounded; but in the case of consciousness and its objects we venture to affirm that the metaphysician has invariably