CHAPTER III.
For an answer to this question we must refer ourselves to observation and experience. But observation and experience have already decided the point. Consciousness itself is the actualisation of the conception we have been describing. Lying between the two species of human existence discriminated at the commencement of this paper, consciousness is an act of antagonism against the one of them, and has the other of them for its result. A glance at the very surface of man showed it to be a matter of general notoriety, that sensation and the consciousness of sensation, passion and the consciousness of passion, never coexist in an equal degree of intensity. We found the great law connected with them to be this; not that they grew with each other's growth and strengthened with each other's strength, but, on the contrary, that each of them gained just in proportion as the other lost. Wherever a passion was observed to be carried to its greatest excess, a total absence or cessation of consciousness was noticed to be the result, and the man lost his personality. When
