labouring to bring out—namely, that human consciousness is, in every instance, an act of antagonism against some one or other of the given modifications of our natural existence—finds its strongest confirmation when we turn to the contemplation of the moral character of man. We have hitherto been considering consciousness chiefly in its relation to those modifications of our nature which are impressed upon us from without. We here found, that consciousness, when deeply scrutinised, is an act of opposition put forth against our sensations; that our sensations are invaded and impaired by an act of resistance which breaks up their monopolising dominion, and in the room of the sensation thus partially displaced, realises man's personality, a new centre of activity known to each individual by the name "I," a word which, when rightly construed, stands as the exponent of our violation of the causal nexus of nature, and of our consequent emancipation therefrom. The complex antithetical phenomenon in which this opposition
longer merely points out something which ought to be, it also embodies something which is. And thus it is transformed into the very other member of the discrimination from which it was originally contradistinguished; and thus the distinction is rendered utterly void; while "mental" and "moral" science, if we must affix these epithets to philosophy, lapse into one. On the other band, does the quid oportet never, in any degree, become the quid est, does duty never pass into fact? Then is the science of morals a visionary, a baseless, and an aimless science, a mere querulous hankering after what can never be. In this case, there is plainly no real or substantial science, except the science of facts, the Science which teaches us the quid est. To talk now of a science of the quid oportet, would be to make use of unmeaning words.
