would keep down the dominating exclusive pretensions of Popery, or probably with much greater severity. Should Protestantism remain quiet within its present bounds in France, it would assuredly receive their protection, and be guarded scrupulously from all molestation. But all efforts that may be made to extend its influence in an aggressive direction upon the pagan irreligiousness which overspreads that land, brought about by the Church of Rome, by exposing the errors of that church, will certainly be met by the utmost repressive rigour from the French judicial tribunals. Instances of this have already several times occurred, in which justice and law, the Charte and the most indisputable principles of religious freedom, have been set aside, in order to obstruct the progress of the Gospel. And we perceive a very clear intimation in the pages under our review, that proceedings of this kind are to be systematically persevered in, whenever occasion may offer for the same purpose. It behoves then French Protestants to understand well their position, and they cannot do this without understanding their own importance. If they consider themselves as what they numerically are a mere fraction of the French population; if they regard themselves as nationally an insignificant body of men; if they believe that the action of their zeal should be confined to narrow circles; that individual conversions, however numerous, should form the limit of their hope, they misconceive, we apprehend, the peculiar nature of their situation. Its peculiarity and its extreme momentousness consists in this, that the great mass of their countrymen. Popish and Infidel, must receive the light of the Gospel from them, or they will, according to all human appearances, never be visited by it at all. In Popery for the intellect, and beyond Protestantism, there is no Christianity. If Frenchmen, therefore, cannot be brought over to the adoption of the reformed faith, they must forever remain destitute of religion. The thought that this great change among them may be to any considerable extent effected, we know, may strike our readers as preposterously absurd; yet they should reflect, that as there is but one step from the which sublime to the ridiculous, so also there is only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime. M. Guizot himself has said with brilliant and profound conciseness :-" Quand on a raison, on a souvent beaucoup plus raison qu'on ne croit,"-which may be thus paraphrased :-" a right principle, vigorously asserted, may stretch in its consequences infinitely beyond the most sanguine anticipations." There are besides many considerations should elevate the hope of zealous Protestants to take a wide view of the work which Providence has intrusted to them in France; and the principal of these is, that the place which religion should hold in the heart of man is there unoccupied, whether by infidelity, or philosophy, or supersition, or any strong popular interest in public affairs, or revolutionary passion, all of which have fallen into a febrile atrophy, whilst the void which is left in the bosoms of Frenchmen is eo painfully felt, that there is a cry for spiritual aliment from one end of the land to the other. "Who will show us any good?" is the question with which every production that issues from the French press teems the burden of the intellect and of the affections of the whole nation. To that nation then, at large, Protestantism should address itself: and if the Evangelical party of that kingdom were thoroughly convinced of this-if they comprehended the grandeur of their mission, they would derive inspiration from the large perspective it opens before them; and every effort to discourage or restrain their zeal would only afford them proof of their past success and instead of disheartening, would bring with it a fresh supply of courage to speed them on their philanthropic career. It is the genius of the Gospel to produce by small despised means great effects. These great effects should consequently never be lost sight of. To entertain petty prospects as the result of the proclamation and energetic enforcement of divine truth, is to betray a sentiment strongly akin to incredulity; and this very pettiness of prospect, which springs from a skrunken timid soul, delivers over those who aspire not beyond it an easy prey into the hands of the oppressor. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS PART V. The question of Liberty and Necessity has been more perplexed and impeded in its solution by the confounding of a peculiar and very important distinction, than by all other mistakes and oversights burdened upon it besides. The distinction to which we allude is one which ought to be constantly kept in mind, and followed out as a clue throughout the whole philosophy of man-the distinction, namely, between one's existence for others, and one's existence for one'sself, or in other words, the distinction between unconscious and conscious existence. This distinction we remark, is very commonly confounded; that is to say, the separate species of existence specified, instead of being regarded as two are generally regarded as only one; and the consequence is, that all the subsequent conclusions of psychology are more or less perplexed and vitiated by this radical entanglement, and more particularly is the great question just mentioned involved in obscurity thereby, and to all appearance doomed to revolve in the weary rounds of endless and barren speculation. We have already, in various parts of this discussion, endeavoured to establish a complete distinction between these two kinds of being; and now with a view of throwing some light on the intricate question of Liberty and Necessity, not derived from reasoning,, but from immediate fact we proceed to illustrate and enforce this discrimination more strenuously than ever. What then is our existence for others; and in what respect is it to be taken into account in a scientific estimate of ourselves? A little reflection will explain to us what it is, together with all its actual or possible accompaniments. It will be admitted that except in man there is no consciousness any where throughout the Universe. If, therefore man were deprived of consciousness, the whole universe, and all that dwell therein, would be destitute of that act. Let us suppose then that this deprivation actually takes place, and let us ask, What difference would it make in the general aspect and condition of things! As far as the objects of the external universe, animals and so forth are concerned, it would confessedly make none; for all these are without consciousness at any rate, and therefore cannot be affected by its absence. The stupendous machinery of nature would move around precisely as heretofore. But what difference would the absence of consciousness make in the condition of man? Little or none, we reply, in the eyes of a spectator ab extra. In the eyes of a Being different from man, and who regards him, we shall suppose from some other sphere, man's ongoings without consciousness would be the same or nearly the same, as they were with consciousnes. Such a Being would occupy precisely the same position towards the unconscious man as the conscious man at present holds towards the unconscious objects of creation; that is to say, man would still exist for this Being, and for him would evolve all its varied phenomena. We are not to suppose that man in this case would be cut off from any of those sources of inspiration which make him a rational, a passionate, a sentient and an imaginative creature. On the contrary, by reason of the very absence of consciousness, the flood-gates of his being would stand wider than before, and let in upon him stronger and deeper currents of inspiration. He would still be visited by all his manifold sensations, and by all the effects they bring along with them; he would still be the creature of pleasure and of pain; his emotions and desires would be the same as ever, or even more overwhelming; he would still be the inspired slave of all his soft and all his sanguinary passions; for observe, we are not supposing him de.. prived of any of these states of being but only of the consciousness, or re ference to self, of them-only of that notion and reality of self which gene rally accompanies them-a partial cur tailment perfectly conceivable, and one which sometimes actually takes place; for instance, in that abnormal condition of humanity denominated somnambulism. In the case we are supposing then, man's reason or intelligence would still be left to him. He would still be a mathematician like the bee, and like the beaver a builder of cities. He might still too, have a language and a literature of a certain kind, though destitute, of course, of all allusions and expressions of conscious or personal character. But the "Goddess" or the "Muse" might and would still infuse into his heart the gift of song; and then an unconscious Homer, blind in soul as well as blind in sight, filled by the transmitted power of some foreign afflatus, might have sung the wrath of an unconscious Achilles, and the war waged against Troy by heroic somambulists from Greece. For poetry represents the derivative and unconscious, just as philosophy represents the free and conscious elements of humanity; and is itself, according to every notion of it entertained and expressed from the earliest times down to the present, an inspired or fatalistic development, as is evident from the fact, that all great poets, in the exercise of their art, have ever referred away their power from themselves to the "God," the "Goddess," the "Muse," or some similar source of inspiration always foreign to themselves.* "Est Deus," says the poet, "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo." Listen, also, to the testimony of our own Milton, who, in one of his elegies, gives voice to the belief that he owes his genius to the spring, and like a tree in the budding woods, was wont to blossom into song beneath the vivifying spirit of that genial time. "Fallor?" he asks, easily conceived to be executed with out any consciousness of them on the part of the apparent and immediate agent. Suppose man to be actuated throughout his whole nature by the might of some foreign agency; and he may realize the most stupendous operations, and yet remain in darkness, and incognizant of them all the while. A cognizance of these operations certainly does not necessarily go hand in hand with their performance. What is there in the workings of human passion that conciousness should necessarily accompany it, any more than it does the tossings of the stormy sea! What is there in the radiant emotions which issue forth in song, that consciousness should naturally and necessarily accompany them, any more than it does the warblings and the dazzling verdure of the sun-lit woods? What is there in the exercise of reason, that conciousness should inevitably go along with it, any more than it accompanies the mechanic skill with which the spider spreads his claggy snares? There is obviously nothing. The divorce then between concionness and all these powers and operations may be conceived as perfectly complete; and this conception is all that is here necessary for the purposes of our coming argument. Existence then, together with all the powers and operations just indicated, might be truly predicated of man, even in his unconcious state. And even more than this might be affirmed of him. We could not indeed with propriety say, the reason of which will appear by and by, that man without conciousness would be invested in any degree with a moral character. Yet even here, according to the moral philosophy of Paley and I his school, in which morality is expounded as the mere adaptation of means to ends in the production of the social welfare-which adaptation might be perfectly well effected without any conciousness on the part of man, just as bees and other animals adapt means to ends without being aware of what they are about-according to this view, man although unconscious The sublimest works of intelligence would still be a moral creature. Nethen are quite possible; and may be ther without conciousness would "Fallor? an et nobis redeunt in carmina mihi munere veris Hence the truth of the common saying-Poela nascitur non fit; an adage which is directly reversed in the case of the philospher-Philosophus fit non nascitur. + Miltoni Poemati. Elegia quinta. In adventum Veris. man possess laws in the proper sense of the word; but here too according to the Hobbesian doctrines which make law to consist in the domination or supremacy of force, and the power of a supreme magistrate all that is necessary to constitute it, man might in every respect be considered a finished legislator, and a creature living under laws. But it is time to turn these preliminary observations to some account. Let us now then ask, depriving man of consciousness, what is it we actually leave him, and what is it we actually deprive him of? We leave him all that we have said. We leave him existence, and the performance of many operations, the greatest, as well as the most insignificant. But the existence thus left to him, together with all its phenomena, we beg it may be observed, is only one species of existence. It is a peculiar kind of existence which must be noted well, and discriminated from existence of another species which we are about to mention. In a word, it is existence merely for others. This is what we leave man when we suppose him divested of consciousness. And now we again ask, depriving man of consciousness, what do we really deprive him of? and we answer, that we totally deprive him of exist ence for himself; that is, we deprive him of that kind of existence in which alone he has any share, interest, or concern; or in other words, by emptying him of consciousness, we take away from him altogether his personality, or his true and proper being. For of what importance is it to him that he should exist for others, and, for them, should evolve the most marvellous phenomena, if he exists not for himself, and takes no account of the various manifestations he displays? What reality can such a species of existence have for him? Obviously none. What can it avail a man to be and to act, if he remains all the while without consciousness of his Being, and his actions? In short, divested of consciousness, is it not plain that a man is no longer "I," or self, and in such circumstances, must not his existence, together with all its ongoings, in so far as he is concerned, be absolutely zero, or a blank? Thus existence becomes discriminated into two distinct species, which, though they may be found together, as they usually are in man, are yet perfectly separate and distinguishable; existence for others, and existence for one's self. Recapitulating what we have said, this distinction may be established and explained thus, in a very few words:-Deprive man of consciousness, and in one sense you do not deprive him of existence, or of any of the vigorous manifestations and operations of existence. In one sense, that is, for others, he exists just as much as ever. But in another sense, you do deprive him of existence as soon as you divest him of consciousness. In this latter sense he now ceases to exist; that is, he exists no longer for himself. He is no longer that which was "I," or self. He has lost his personality. He takes no account of his existence, and therefore his existence, as far as he is concerned, is virtually and actually null. But if there were only one species, and one notion of existence, it is impossible that man, when denuded of consciousness, should both exist, and not exist, as we have shown he does. If existence were of one kind only, it would be impossible to reconcile this contradiction, which is yet seen to be perfectly true, and an undeniable matter of fact. The conclusion therefore is inevitable and irresistible, that existence is not of one, but of two kinds; existence for others, and existence for ourselves; and that a creature may possess the former without possessing the latter, and that, though it should lose the latter by losing consciousness, it may yet retain the former, and "live, and breathe, and have a being in the eyes of others." Does some one. here remark that consciousness is not our existence, but is merely the knowledge of our exist ence? Then we beg such a person to consider what would become of his existence, with respect to him, if he were deprived of the knowledge of it. Would it not be, in so far as he was concerned, precisely on the footing of a nonentity? One's knowledge therefore, or consciousness of existence, is far more than mere consciousness of existence. It is the actual ground of a species of existence itself. It constitutes existence for one's self, or personal existence; for without this consciousness a man would possess no personality, and each man's per sonality is his true and proper being. Having divided existence then into two distinct kinds, the next question is to what account do we propose turning the discrimination? If it is of no practical use in removing difficulties and in throwing light upon the obscurer phenomena of man, it is worthless, and must be discarded as a barren and mere hair-splitting refinement. What application then has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and in particular, what assistance docs it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty-that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law and justice, loosened from their mighty span, would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? In availing ourselves then of the assistance of this distinction, and in applying it to our purposes, the first circumstance connected with it which attracts our attention is the following fact, deserving we may be permitted to say of very emphatic notice; that while the one of these species of existence precedes the act of consciousness, the other of them follows that act. Our existence for others is antecedent, but our existence for ourselves is subsequent to the act of consciousness. Before a child is conscious, it exists for others; but it exists for itself only after it is conscious. Prior to consciousness, or in the absence of that act, man is a one-sided phantasmagoria; vivid on the side towards others with all the colours, the vigorous ongoings, the accomplishments, and the reality of existence, but on the other side, the side where he himself should be, but is not yet, what is there? a blank-utter nothingness. But posterior to consciousness, and in consequence of it, this vacuity is filled up, new scenery is unfolded, and a new reality is erected on the blank side behind the radiant pageant. The man himself is now there. The one-sided existence has become doubled. He no longer exists merely for others; he exists also for himself-a very different, and for him, a much more important matter. Existence for one's self then, personal existence, or in other words, that species of Being which alone properly concerns man, is found not to precede, but to follow the act of consciousness; therefore the next fact of humanity to which we beg to call very particular attention is this; that man properly speaking acts before he exists; for consciousness is, as we have already shown, and will show still further, a pure act, and partakes in no degree of the nature of a passion. At the same time, the proof that consciousness is of this character will convince us that it cannot have its origin in the first-mentioned and given species of existence, which we have called existence for others, or existence without consciousness. But this is not the place for that proof. It will be attempted by and by. This fact, that man acts before he truly and properly exists, may perhaps at first sight appear rather startling, and may be conceived to be at direct variance with what are called "the laws of human thought;" for it may be said that these laws compel us to conceive man in Being before we can conceive him in act. But if it should be really found to be thus at variance with these laws, our only answer is, that facts are "stubborn things," and that we do not care one straw for the laws of human thought when they contradict the facts of experience; and a fact of experience we maintain it to be let people conceive or not as they please or can, that man's true Being follows and arises out of man's actthat man properly speaking cannot be said to be until he acts-that consciousness is an act, and that our proper existence, being identical and convertible with our personality, which results from consciousness, is not the antecedent but the consequent of that act. Need we say any thing further in enforcement and illustration of this very extraordinary fact? Every man will admit that his true Being is that which for him is "I." Now suppose no man had ever thought himself “I,” would he ever have become "I," or possessed a proper personal Being? Certainly not. It is only after thinking one's self "I," and in consequence of thinking one's self "I," that one becomes "." But thinking one's self "I" is an act-the act of consciousness. Therefore the act of consciousness is anterior to the existence of man, therefore man is in Act before he is truly and properly in Being; or in other words, he performs an act before he has an existence, a standing out for himself. |
