James Frederick Ferrier

ears or thereabout, in order to find a satisfactory basis from which to start. For philosophy, as no one realised more than Ferrier, is no arbitrary succ

ur faces backwards, and to revert to systems of bygone days, we always find, when we look more closely, that in our onward course we hav

this obtained a very reputable place in the estimation of Europe, and more especially of France. As it was this school more especially that Ferrier spent much of his time in combating, it

n which external things may make what impression they will, and knowledge is apparently explained at once. But though Locke certainly succeeded in making these terms the common coin of ordinary life, difficulties crop up when we come to examine them more closely. After all, it is evident, the only knowledge our mind can have is a knowledge of its own ideas-ideas which are, of course, caused by something which is outside, or at least, as Locke would say, by its quality. Now, from this it would appear that these 'ideas' after all come between the mind and the 'thing,' whatever it is, that causes them-that is to say, we can perhaps maintain that we only know our 'ideas,' and not things as in themselves. Locke passes into elaborate distinctions between primary qualities of things, of which he holds exact representations are given, and secondary qualities,

s the experience we have; and by experience he signifies perceptions. Ideas to him are nothing more than perceptions, and whether they are ideas simply of the mind, or ideas of some object, is to him the same. If we begin to imagine such conceptions as those of universality or necessity, of God or the self, beyond a complex of successive ideas, we are going farther than experience permits. We cannot connect our perceptions with an object, nor can we get beyond what

ich left an opportunity open to Kant to suggest a new development, to ask whether things being found inadequate in producing knowledge, we might not ask if knowledge could

might be believed in by those who found any comfort in so believing, but to the educated man who had seriously reflected on them, they were anachronisms. The very desperateness of the case, however, seemed to promise a remedy. Men could not rest in a state o

of the coherence of the Universe, and the consequent possibility of establishing Faith once more in the world. Reid, to begin with, instead of looking at Hume's results as serious, regarded them as necessaril

in fact, that these first pertained to mind. Hence we have a dualistic system given us to start with, and the question is how the two sides are to be connected? Wh

ermanent subject, 'I.' Sensations 'suggest' the nature of a mind and the belief in its existence. And this signifies that we have the power of making inferences-how we do not exactly know, but we believe it to be, not by any special reasoning process, but by the 'common-sense' innately born within us. Common-sense is responsible for a good deal more-for the conceptions of existence and of cause, for instance; for Reid acknowledges that sensations alone must fail to account for ideas such as those of extension, space, and motion. This standpoint seems indeed as if it did not differ

is rounded phrases gained him considerable admiration, as such writing often does. He carried-perhaps inadvertently-Reid's views farther than he would probably have held as justifiable. He says we are not, properly speaking, conscious of self or the existence of self, but merely of a sensation or some other quality, which, by a subsequent suggestion of the unders

omprehensive and satisfactory point of view. It was with Kant that the distinction arose between sensation and the forms necessary to its perception, the form of space and time, and so on. As to this part of the theory of knowledge, Reid and his school were not clear; they only made an effort to express the fact that something was required to verify our knowledge, but they were far from satisfactorily attaining to their go

y language, something which can be understood of the people, which can be assimilated with the popular religion and politics-in fact, which can really be lived as well as thought; and it is only after many years of use that we can really tell whether these conditions have been fulfilled. For this reason we are in some measure justified in taking the popular estimate of a system, and in considering its practical results as well as the value of its theory. Now, the commonly accepted view of the eighteenth-century philosophers

just what happened in the eighteenth century. Men relapse into a self-satisfied indolence of mind: in religion they are content with believing in a sort of general divine Beneficence wh

es of our existence. The materialistic school had practically done away with the latter in its entirety, had said that nature is capable of being explained by mechanical means, and that these must necessarily suffice for us. But the orthodox section adopted other lines; it accepted all the ordinarily received ideas of God, immortality, and the like, but it maintained the existence of an Absolute which can only be inferred, but not presented to the mind, and, strangest of all, declared that the 'last and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar "To

both. This, however, was scarcely realised either by Hume or Kant, though the latter came very near the formulation of it. Kant saw, at least, that things could not produce knowledge, and he therefore changed his front and suggested starting with the knowledge that was before regarded as result-a change in point of view that caused a revolution in thought similar to that caused in our ideas of the natural world by the introduction of the syste

g knowledge as a dualistic process, as having two sides involved in it, a subject and an object. Now, Hegel says our mistake is this: we cannot make a separation of such a kind except by a process of abstraction: the one really implies the other, and could not possibly exist without it. We may in our ordinary pursuits do so, without doubt; we may concentrate our attention on one side or the other, as the case may be; we ma

spiritual power beyond our own, the Belief in the God we cannot know and glory in not being able so to know, he felt to be an equal impossibility. Ferrier, and many others, asked the question, Are these alternatives exhaustive? Can we not have a rational explanation of the world and of ourselves? Can we not, that is, attain to freedom? The new point of view seemed in some measure to meet the difficulty, and therefore it was looked to with hope

can it be known that the real matter supposed to cause them has any part at all in the process? Scepticism, as we saw before, has the way opened up for it, and it doubts the existence of matter, seeing that it has been given no reasonable grounds for belief in it, while Idealism boldly denies its instrumentality and existence. What then, he asks, of Dr. Reid and his School of Common-Sense? Reid cannot say that matter is known in consciousness, but what he does say is that something innately born within us forces us to believe in its existence. But then, as Ferrier pertinently points out, scepticism and idealism do not merely doubt and

rance to knowledge, from mere opinion to certainty and satisfaction; in other words, from a discipline in which the thinking is only apparent, to a discipline in which the thinking is real.' 'The difference is as great between "the science of the human mind" and metaphysic, as it is between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomy, and it is very much of the

chology recognises perception on the one hand (subjective), and matter on the other (objective), but metaphysic says the distinction ought to be drawn between 'our apprehension' and 'the perception-of-matter,' the latter being one fact and indivisible, and on no account to be taken as two separate facts or thoughts. The whole point is, that by no possible means can the perception-of-matter be divided into two facts or existences, as was done by psychology. And

ion steers clear of all the perplexities of representationalism; for it gives us in perception one only

e property: they are states of the everlasting intellect. The exercise of the senses is the condition upon which we are permitted