pole where consciousness abides, and vested entirely in the opposite pole where passion dwells; or rather we should say that as a man he is extinct, and lives only as a machine. In both of these cases the men lose their personality. They are played upon by a foreign agency.
"Infortunati nimium sua si mala norint!"
But as yet they know not how mean and how miserable they are. Consciousness must return to them first, and only they themselves can bring it back; and when it does return, the effect of its very first approach is to lower the temperature of the sensation and of the passion. The men are not now wholly absorbed in the state that prevailed at the sensual and passionate pole. The balance is beginning to right itself. They have originated an act of their own, which has given them some degree of freedom; and they now begin to look down upon their former state as upon a state of intolerable slavery; and ever as this self-reference of theirs waxes, they look down upon that state as more and more slavish still, until at length, the balance being completely reversed and lying over on the other side, consciousness is again enthroned, the passion and the sensation are extinguished, and the men feel themselves to be completely free.
The first general expression, then, of this great law (which, however, may require much minute attention to calculate all its subordinate forces and their precise balances) is this:—When passion, or any state of mind at the one pole, is at its maximum, consciousness is at its minimum—this maximum being sometimes so great as absolutely to extinguish consciousness while it continues; and, vice versa, when consciousness is at its maximum, the passion, or whatever the state of mind at the opposite pole may be, is at its minimum—the maximum being in this case, too, sometimes so great as to amount to a total suspension of the passion, &c. What important consequences does the mere enunciation of this great law suggest! In particular, what a firm and intelligible basis does it afford to the great superstructure of morality! What light does it carry down into the profoundest recesses of duty! Man's passions may be said to be the origin of all human wickedness. What more important fact, then, can there be than this, that the very act of consciousness, simple as it may seem, brings along with it, to a considerable extent, the suspension of any passion which may be tyrannizing over us; and that, as the origination of this act is our own, so is it in our own power to heighten and increase its lustre as we please, even up to the highest degree of self-reflection, where it triumphs over passion completely? These matters, however, shall be more fully unfolded when we come to speak of the consequences of the fact of consciousness.[1]
- ↑ Dr Chalmers has a long chapter in his Moral Philosophy (Chap. II.) on the effect which consciousness has in obliterating the state or mind upon which it turns its eye. But to what account does he turn his observation of this fact? He merely notices it as attaching a peculiar difficulty to the study of the phenomena of mind. It does indeed. It attaches so peculiar a difficulty to the study of these phenomena, that we wonder the Doctor was not led by this consideration to perceive that these phenomena were no longer the real and important facts of the science; but that the fact of consciousness, together with the consequences it brought along with it, and nothing else, truly was so. Again, on the other hand, this fact attaches so peculiar a facility to the study of morality, that we are surprised the Doctor did not avail himself of its assistance in explaining the laws and character of duty. But how does Dr Chalmers "get quit of this difficulty"? If the phenomena of mind disappear as soon as consciousness looks at them—how do you think he obviates the obstacle in the way of science? Why, by emptying human nature of consciousness altogether; or, as he informs us, "by adopting Dr Thomas Brown's view of consciousness, who makes this act to be," as Dr Chalmers says, "a brief act of memory." Whether this means that consciousness is a short act of memory, or an act of memory following shortly after the "state" remembered, we are at a loss to say; but at any rate, we here have consciousness converted into memory. For we presume that there is no difference in kind, no distinction at all between an act of memory which is brief, and an act of memory which is not brief. Thus consciousness is obliterated. Man is deprived of the notion of
