ness does not come into operation in consequence of these states; but in spite of them: it does not come into play to increase and foster these states, but only actively to suspend, control, or put a stop to them. This, then, is the reason why consciousness cannot develop itself without their previous manifestation; namely, because unless they existed there would be nothing for it to combat, to weaken, 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 philosophy, which making him at first, and in his earliest stage, the passive recipient of the natural effluences of things—the involuntary effect of some foreign cause—seeks afterwards to engraft freedom upon him;—a vain, impracticable, and necessarily unsuccessful endeavour, as the whole history of philosophy, from first to last, has shown.
We are now able to render a distinct answer to the question: What is the precise effect of our argument on the subject of the human mind? Its precise effect and bearing is to turn us to the study of fact—of a clear and a peculiar fact—from the contemplation of an object which is either an hypothesis, or else no object at all (not even an hypothesis but a contradiction), or else an irrelevant object of research, and one which cannot by any conceivability contain the fact which it is our business to investigate. Even granting the human mind to be a real object, still we affirm that our argument, and the state of the fact, show the necessity of our realizing and viewing consciousness as something altogether distinct from and independent of it—inasmuch as it is the tendency of every modification of mind to keep this fact or act in abeyance under their supremacy so long as that supremacy continues—and, therefore, it never can be the true and relevant business of philosophy to attend to this object (however real) when engaged in the study of man; because in doing so, philosophy would necessarily miss and overlook the leading, proper, and peculiar phenomenon of his being. The fact of consciousness, expressed in the word "I," and its accompanying facts, such as the direct and vital antithesis subsisting between it and passion, sensation, &c.—these are the only facts which psychology ought to regard. This science ought to discard from its direct consideration every fact which is not peculiarly man's. It ought to turn away its attention from the facts subsisting at what we have called the sensitive, passionate, and rational pole of humanity; because these facts are not, properly speaking, the true and absolute property of humanity at all; and it ought to confine its regards exclusively to the pole in which consciousness is vested; and, above all things, it ought to have nothing to do with speculations concerning any transcendent substance (mind, for instance) in which these phenomena may be imagined to inhere.
Let us conclude this chapter by shortly summing up our whole argument and its results, dividing our conclusions into two distinct heads: 1st, concerning the "science of the human mind;" and 2d, concerning the "human mind" itself.
In the first place, does the science
