Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/523

career; on that supposition I conceive that these ethics would apply to man, would, indeed, be the only rule and motive of his actions in his early condition, and prior to the development of these subsequent manifestations. Now this is by no means an absurd or untrue supposition; on the contrary, it is certain that man is sensitive to pleasure and pain before his reason comes into play. In such circumstances I hold that these selfish ethics are the only true, the only possible ethics of his condition. There can be no objection to our making man commence his career as a mere sensational creature, provided we allow due weight and authority to the principles, no less original, which he afterwards develops. This is the position taken up by the celebrated philosopher Hobbes. He regards sensation as man's earliest manifestation; and this fact, for a fact it certainly is, seems to me to justify some of his apparently paradoxical opinions. For instance Hobbes asserts that man's natural condition is a state of mutual warfare and aggression, and this assertion has drawn down upon his head a large measure of obloquy and indignation. But it is precisely equivalent to saying that man's natural condition is a state of susceptibility to pleasure and to pain; because this susceptibility, if unchecked by any other principle, will necessarily strive after a monopoly of enjoyment, and this struggle will necessarily bring people into collision with each other. If, therefore, by our natural condition, Hobbes means our early and sensational condi-