Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/112

out of notice as unworthy of any further consideration. Yet we have all along seen that these phenomena might perfectly well have existed, and in animals and children of a certain age actually do exist, without consciousness; or, in other words, without being accompanied by the fact of personality, the notion and the reality expressed by the word "I." In short, we have seen that the presence of consciousness forms the exception, and that the absence of consciousness forms the great rule of creation: inspired though that creation is, throughout, by intelligence, sensation, and desire. In devoting our attention, therefore (as the philosophers of mind have hitherto done), to such phenomena as intelligence, sensation, and desire, we should virtually be philosophising concerning unconscious creatures, and not concerning man in his true and distinctive character; we should, moreover, as has been shown, be studying an order of phenomena, which not only do not assist the manifestation of consciousness, but which naturally tend to prevent it from coming into operation; and finally, we should, at any rate, be merely contemplating attributes which man possesses in common with the rest of creation. But the true science of every being proceeds upon the discovery and examination of facts, or a fact peculiar to the Being in question. But the phenomenon peculiar to man, the only fact which accurately and completely contradistinguishes him from all other creatures, is no other than this very fact of consciousness; this very fact,