James Frederick Ferrier

one the less because-contrary to the dictates of worldly wisdom-he gives voice to the sense of injustice that is rankling in his mind. Ferrier had been disappointed in 1852 in not obtaining th

he result to the opposition to, and misrepresentation of, his system, and claimed with some degree of justice that it was not his merits that were taken into account, but the supposed ort

end in the curtailment of all liberty in regard to philosophical opinion, so far as the University was concerned, he felt the time had come to speak. For a quarter of a century he had devoted the best part of his life and energies to the study of philosophy, and he held he had a duty to discharge to it as one of the public instructors of the land. What cause, he asked, had a body like the Council to say orig

r nothing?'-a question, indeed, which cannot fail to strike whoever tries to wade through certain tedious dissertations of the time, all expressing truths which seem incontrovertible in their nature, but all of which are also inexpressibly uninteresting. Philosophy to Ferrier is not the elementary science that it would appear from these discour

h-whom, indeed, he had loved so warmly. Hamilton had not agreed with Ferrier; he had thought him wrong, and told him so, and Ferrier was the last to resent this action, or think the less of him for not

and he, considering that orthodoxy was being seriously threatened by German rationalistic views, had formulated his indictment against Ferrier in the strongest possible terms. He believed that in Ferrier's writings there was an attempt to substitute formal demonstration of real existence for 'belief,' thereby making faith of no effect; also that he denied the separate existence of the materi

for truth without thereby endangering the object held in view. Mr. Cairns's attack-without intention, for he was an honourable man and able scholar-was unjust. Ferrier does not claim to prove existence-he accepts it, and only reasons as to what it is; as to the material world, he acknowledges not a mere material world, but one along with which intelligence is and must be known; the separate existence of mind he likewise denies only in so far as to assert that mind without thought is nonsense. The substantiality of the mind he maintains as the one great permanent existence amid all fluctuations and contingencies, and without personal identity, he tells us, there can be no continued co

elings more strongly than he should, rather than to deliberate judgment. No one was more sensible than he of the danger to which he was subject of allowing himself to be carried off his feet in the heat of argument. This is very clearly shown by a letter to a friend quoted in the Remains: 'One thing I would recommend, not to be too sharp in your criticism of others. No one has committed this fault oftene

theories of existence, and forming a just judgment regarding their respective merits. The exercise of patronage is always a difficult and thankless task, but surely in no case could it have been more difficult than in this, and we can hardly wonder now that the electors simply took the advice of those they deemed most worthy to bestow it; certainly the candidate finally selected was

his interest grew ever keener; and economics, which was one of the subjects he was bound to teach. His life was uneventful; it was varied little by expeditions into the outer world, much as these would have been appreciated by his friends. His whole interest was centred in his work and in the University in which he taught, and whose well-being was so dear to him. Of his letters, few, unfortunately, have been p

ion. One of the first is written in October 1851 from St. Andrews, an

wise there would be something peculiar or anomalous or sectarian in its origin, which would destroy its claims to g

wer-

ilosophy a bodily want? No. Why not? Because nothing that may be given to the Body has any effect in a

hey seek and find their gratification. What

r-Know

y which makes food food? This is obviously its physically nutritive quality. Whatever has the nutritive property is food; whatever has it not is not food, however like excellent beef and mutton it may be. So in regard to knowledge, its common and essential quality-the quality in virtue of which knowledge is knowledge-is i

-Truth is whatever is

u oppose Pure Reason to Experience, and philosophers generally assent to the distinction. This at once gives your school the advantage, for the world will always cleave to experience in preference to anything else, leaving us metaphysicians, who are supposed to abandon experience, hanging as it were in baskets in the c

s and fatal an error to confound Experience and Consciousness? Is not a man's experience the whole developed contents of his consciousness? I cannot see how this can be denied. And therefore, before you wrote, I was switheri

ilosophy. Considered in its details and accessories, it certainly contains many good things; but, viewed as a whole and in essentialibus, it is about the greatest humbug that ever was palmed off upon an unwary world. As an instance among many which might be adduced, of the ambiguity of the word, and of the vacillation of the members of this school, it may be remarked that while Reid made the essence of common-se

us subject-thing + me. This is the unit of ignorance.' Apparently, in spite of full explanation of his newly-discovered view, Ferrier's correspondent had failed to take it in, and consequently he gently rails at him for 'sticking at the axiom,' and wishes him to help him to a name for what he calls the 'Agnoiology' for want of something better. He goes on: 'I take it that I have caught you in my net, and that wallop about as you will I shall land you at last. I have now little fear that I shall succeed in convincing you, or at anyrate less hardened sinners, that the knowledge of object-subject is a self-contradiction, and that therefore object-subject, or matter per se, is not a thing of which we c

Beyond" all human thought and knowledge is itself a category of human thought? There is much na?veté in the procedure of you cautious gentry who would keep scrupulously within the length of your teth

thropomorphists are both of necessity anthropomorphists, and for my part I maintain that the anti-man is the bigger anthropomorphist of the two.' This criticism of the 'Beyond' and its unknowableness, while yet it was ackn

ground on which you object to it. Surely you would not have me establish a doctrine of ignorance which was not consistent with my doctrine of knowledge. Surely I am entitled to deduce all that is logically deducible from my principles. Your meaning I presume is that my doctrine of ignorance flows so manifestly from my doctrine of knowledge that it is unnecessary to develop and parade it. There I differ from you. It flows inevitably, but I cannot think that it flows obviously. Else why was it never hit upon until now?... Don't tell me, then, that my conclusions that matter per se, Ding an sich, is what it is impossible for us to be ignorant of, just because it is absolutely unknowable (and for no other reason). Don't tell me that this conclusion is so obvious as not to require to be put down in black and white, when we find Kant and every other philosop

f puppy dogs. This shows that, like a carpet knight, you have never smelt the real smoke of metaphysical battle, but at most have taken part in the

ing," leaving out ignorance. But why an introduction to metaphysics? If this be an introduction to metaphysics, pray, Mr. Pundit, what and where are metaphysics themselves? No, sir, it shall be calle

hem in the University and tried to work them out in his study. Doubtless it was of the greatest use to him to be able to write about them as he would, had opportunity served, have spoken; and this opportunity was a

llorship of the University of Bombay. From Southampton he made his way to the scene of his schooldays at Greenwich, from which place he writes to one of the sons of Dr. Bruce of Ruthwell, with whom he spent a happy childhood: 'One of our fêtes was a sumptuous fish dinner at Greenwich. I call it sumptuous, but in truth the

es, otherwise my children will appropriate it for their collections, with which the house is swarming.... The ego is an infinite and active capacity of never being anything in particular. I will uphold that definition against the world. Did you never feel how much you revolted from being fix

ement remain-in which death should mean only the rising from the individual into a true and universal life. It is a matter to which he frequently refers, and always in terms of