Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/113

that he does take cognisance of his intelligent and rational states, blending with them, or realising in conjunction with them, his own personality—a realisation which animals, endowed though they are like man with reason and with passion, never accomplish. And thus it is that the fact of consciousness, from having occupied the obscurest and most neglected position in all psychology, rises up into paramount importance, and instead of submitting to be treated with slight and cursory notice, and then passed from, as the mere medium through which the proper facts of psychology are known to us, becomes itself the leading, and, properly speaking, the only fact of the science; while, at the same time, questions as to its nature and origin, the time, manner, and consequences of its manifestation, come to form the highest problems that can challenge our attention when engaged in the study of ourselves. All the other facts connected with us are fatalistic; it is in this phenomenon alone, as we shall see, that the elements of our freedom are to be found.