Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/90

80 or to destroy. Its occupation or office would be gone. There would be nothing for it to exert itself against. Its antagonist force not having been given, there would be no occasion for its existence. This force (the power existing at what we have called the mental pole) does not create consciousness, but as soon as this force comes into play, consciousness creates itself, and, by creating itself, suspends or diminishes the energy existing at that pole. This fact, showing that consciousness is in nothing passive, but is ab origine essentially active, places us upon the strongest position which, as philosophers fighting for human freedom, we can possibly occupy; and it is only by the maintenance of this position that man's liberty can ever be philosophically vindicated and made good. In truth, possessing this fact, we hold in our hands the profoundest truth in all psychology, the most awful and sublime truth connected with the nature of man. Our present mention of it is necessarily very brief and obscure: but we will do our best to clear it up and expound it fully when we come to discuss the problem: How does consciousness come into operation? We will then start man free. We will show that he brings himself into existence, not indeed as a being, but as a human being; not as an existence, but as an existence calling itself "I," by an act of absolute and essential freedom. We will empty his true and real being of all passivity whatsoever, in opposition to those doctrines of a false, inert, and contradictory