But the act of contemplating our own phenomena unsystematically, is no other than our old friend, the act of consciousness: therefore the only distinction between philosophy and consciousness is, that the former is with system, and the latter without it. Thus, in attending to the fact which philosophy brings along with her, we find that consciousness and philosophy become identified,—that philosophy is a systematic or studied consciousness, and that consciousness is an unsystematic or unstudied philosophy. But what do we here mean by the words systematic and unsystematic? These words signify only a greater and a less degree of clearness, expansion, strength, and exaltation. Philosophy possesses these in the higher degree, our ordinary consciousness in the lower degree. Thus philosophy is but a clear, and expanded, a strong, and an exalted consciousness; while, on the other hand, consciousness is an obscurer, a narrower, a weaker, and a less exalted philosophy. Consciousness is philosophy nascent; philosophy is consciousness in full bloom and blow. The difference between them is only one of degree, and not one of kind; and thus all conscious men are to a certain extent philosophers, although they may not know it.
But what comes of this? Whither do these observations tend? With what purport do we point out, thus particularly, the identity in kind between philosophy and the act of consciousness? Reader! if thou hast eyes to see, thou canst not fail to perceive (and we pray thee mark it well) that it is precisely in this identity of philosophy and consciousness that the merely theoretical character of philosophy disappears, while, at this very point, her ever-living character, as a practical disciplinarian of life, bursts forth into the strongest light. For consciousness is no dream—no theory; it is no lesson taught in the schools, and confined within their walls; it is not a system remote from the practical pursuits and interests of humanity; but it has its proper place of abode upon the working theatre of living men. It is a real, and often a bitter struggle on the part of each of us against the fatalistic forces of our nature, which are at all times seeking to enslave us. The causality of nature, both without us, and especially within us, strikes deep roots, and works with a deep intent. The whole scheme and intention of nature, as evolved in the causal nexus of creation, tend to prevent one and all of us from becoming conscious, or, in other words, from realising our own personality. First come our sensations, and these monopolise the infant man; that is to say, they so fill him that there is no room left for his personality to stand beside them; and if it does attempt to rise, they tend to overbear it, and certainly for a time they succeed. Next come the passions, a train of even more overwhelming sway, and of still more flattering aspect; and now there is even less chance than before of our ever becoming personal beings. The casual, or enslaving powers of nature, are multiplying upon us. These passions, like our sensations, monopolise the man, and cannot endure that anything should infringe their dominion. So far from helping to realise our personality, they do everything in their power to keep it aloof or in abeyance, and to lull man into oblivion of himself. So far from coming into life, our personality tends to disappear, and, like water torn and beaten into invisible mist by the force of a whirlwind, it often entirely vanishes beneath the tread of the passions. Then comes reason; and perhaps you imagine that reason elevates us to the rank of personal beings. But looking at reason in itself,—that is considering it as a straight, and not as a reflex act,[1] what has reason done, or what can reason do for man (we speak of kind, and not of degree, for man may have a higher degree of it than animals), which she has not also done for beavers and for bees, creatures which, though rational, are yet not personal beings? Without some other power to act as supervisor of reason, this faculty would have worked in man just as it works in animals,—that is to say it would have operated within him merely as a power of adapting means to ends, without lending him any assistance towards the realization of his own personality. Indeed, being, like our other natural modifications, a state of mo-
- ↑ Vol. xliii., p. 791.
