Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/96

86 the question put, Would not a science of this kind, and of this substance, be still worth something? Would it not, in fact, be the true science of human nature? We answer, No. Whatever might be its value in other respects, we aver that, as a science of man, it would be altogether worthless and false. And for this reason, because the object of our research here not only does not contain the proper and peculiar fact of man, namely, the fact of consciousness, but it contains, as we have seen, an order of phenomena which tend unceasingly to overcloud, keep down, and extinguish this fact. In studying this object, therefore, with the view of constructing a science of man out of our examination of it, we should be following a course doubly vicious and misleading. We should not only be studying facts among which consciousness is not to be found, but we should be studying and attaching a scientific value to facts—esteeming them, too, to be characteristic of man's proper nature, facts which actually rise up as obstacles to prevent consciousness (that is, his proper nature and peculiar fact) from coming into manifestation. If, then, we would establish a true science of man, there is no other course open to us than this, to abandon, in the first instance, every consideration of "the human mind," whether it be an hypothesis and a reality, together with all its phenomena, and then to confine our attention closely and devoutly to the examination of the great and anomalous fact of human consciousness.