Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/85

Rh it (the state) experienced, and itself (the animal) experiencing. The animal is wholly monopolised by the passion. The two are identical. The animal does not stand aloof in any degree from the influence to which it is subject. There is not in addition to the passion, or whatever the state of mind may be, a consciousness or reference to self of that particular state. In short, there is no self at all in the case. There is nothing but a machine, or thing agitated and usurped by a kind of tyrannous agency, just as a reed is shaken by the wind. The study, then, of the laws and facts of passion, sensation, reason, &c., in animals might be a rational and legitimate enough pursuit; because, in their case, there is no fact of a more important and peculiar character for us to attend to. These phenomena might be said to constitute the proper facts of animal psychology.

The total absorption of the creature in the particular change or "state" experienced, which we have just noticed as the great fact occurring in the animal creation, sometimes occurs in the case of man also; and when it does take place in him, he and they are to be considered exactly upon a par. But it is the characteristic peculiarity of man's nature that this monopolisation of him by some prevailing "state of mind" does not always, or indeed often, happen. In his case there is generally something over and above the change by which he is visited, and this unabsorbed something is the fact of consciousness, the