James Frederick Ferrier

magination in the final or metaphysical question concerning the Being in which we and the world of sensible things participate, Berkeley's Dialogues, Hume's Inquiry

ackle questions the most vital in their character in a straightforward and uncompromising fashion. His earliest published writings, as we have seen, took the form of a series of seven articles, which appeared, roughly speaking, in alternate months, between February of 1838 and March of 1839. These articles, entitled An Int

en says cause and effect are incapable of explanation, and the notion which we form of them is a nonentity, seeing that we have a series of impressions alone to work from; Reid says there is a mind and there is an object, and calls in common-sense to interpret between the two. But the mistake all through is very evident: man looks at Nature in a certain way, interprets her by certain categories, and then he turns his eye upon himself, endeavouring thereby to judge of what he finds within by methods of a similar kind. And the human mind cannot be so 'objectised'; it is something more than the sum of its 'feelings,' 'passions,' and 'states of min

ts objects, passions, or emotions, which leads us into pastures fresh and far separated from the dreary round which the old metaphysicians followed. The same discovery, of course, is always being made, though to Ferrier it was

which are mind's, and man the things which are man's.' We should, Ferrier says, fling 'mind' and its lumber overboard, busy ourselves with the man and his facts. Man's passions and sensations may be referred to 'mind' indeed, but he cannot lay his hands upon the fact of consciousness. That fact cannot be conceived of as vested in the object called the 'human mind,' an object being something really or ideally different from ourselves. In speaking of 'my mind,' m

tion. Common-sense, or rather what is given by its means, has simply to be construed into intelligible forms: in itself it makes no attempt to solve the difficulties that present themselves, and it is folly to suggest its doing so. When a man speaks of my sensations or my states of mind, he means something of which he-as consciousness-is independent, and which can be made an object to him. Were it not so, of course he could not possibly arrive at freedom, but would merely be the helpless child of destiny; and, as Ferrier points out, were consciousness and sensation one, consciousness would not have the power, undoubtedly possessed

freshness and life of youth has gone: the reconciliation is in the ideal, not the actual world. And so with Ferrier: 'The flowers of thy happiness,' says he, 'are withered. They could not last; they gilded but for a day the opening portals of life. But in their place I will give thee

is our refusal to be acted on by outside impressions that constitutes our personality and perception of them; our communication with the universe is the communication of non-communication. And the ego is not something which comes into the world ready-made; it is a living activity which is never passive, for were it passive, it would be annihilated; in submitting to the action of causality its life would be gone. Our destiny is to free ourselves from the bonds of nature, from that 'blessed state of primeval innocence,' the blessedness, after all, of bondage. A man cannot be until he acts, for his Being arise

he dead symbols become living realities, the dead twigs are clothed with verdure. 'Know thyself, and in knowing thyself thou shalt see that this self is not thy true self; but, in the very act of knowing this, thou shalt at once displace this false self, and establish thy true self in its room.' And Ferrier goes on to trace the bearings of his theories in the moral and intellectual world. He fin

know, Ferrier was never lacking. His mind once made up, he had no fear in making his opinions known. He considered that the Scottish Philosophy had become something very like materialism in the hands of Brown and others, and he believed that the whole point of view must be changed if a really spiritual philosophy was to take its place. There may be traces of the impetuosity of youth in this attack: much working out was undoubtedl

rrier's regular lectures. The Institutes, or Theory of Knowing and Being, commences with a definition of philosophy as a 'body of reasoned truth,' and states that though there were plenty of dissertations on the subject in existence, there was no philosophy itself-no scheme of demonstrated truth; and this, and not simply a 'contribution' to philosophy was what was now required

n with Hegel's system. In space they may be separated, but not in cognition, and this idealism does not for one moment deny the existence of 'external' things, but only says they can have no meaning if out of relation to those which are 'internal'; as Hegel might have put it, they could be known as separable by means of 'abstraction' only. From this point we are led on to the next statement, and a most important statement it is, that matter per se is of necessity absolutely unknowable; or to what Ferrier calls the Theory of Ignorance. Whether or not this theory can make good the title to originality which its author claims for it, there is no doubt that its statement in clear language, such as no one can fail to understand, marks an important era in English speculation. There are, Ferrier says, two sorts of so-called ignorance

theory of knowledge' did not proceed so far, he at least made the discovery that the subjective idealism of Kant was as unsatisfactory as the relativity of Hamilton, and as certainly tending to agnosticism. Kant's 'thing-in-itself' is not that of which we are ignorant, or a hidden reality which can be known by faith. It is that which cannot possibly be known-and, in other words, a contradiction or nonsense. Now, Ferrier says, we arrive at the true Idealism-the triumph of phi

dividual freedom figure as the principal conceptions in our knowledge; and even while the Scottish school of psychologists is being combated, the influence of Hamilton is very manifest. But as time goes on, Ferrier's ideas become more concrete; the theory of consciousness becomes more absolute in its conception; the human o

repudiated with energy, and boldly claimed to have developed and completed his system for himself. He claimed to have worked on national lines; to have started from the philosophy of his country as it was currently accepted, and to have little dif

oping a system of his own. It is better that a philosophic system should grow up thus, instead of coming to us from without in language hard to understand because of foreign idioms and unwonted modes of expression. To be of use, a philosophy should speak the language of the people: until it becomes identified with ordinary ways of thinking, its infl

phy is just the study of our own reason in its development, but that what is worked out in our minds hurriedly and within contracted limits, is in philosophy evolved at leisure, and seen in its just proportions: the historian of philosophy has not merely to re

ly that they have something in common with all other minds, i.e., are partakers in a universal intelligence. He works this out in his Introduction in an extremely interesting way, showing, as he does, how in all intelligence there must be a unive

or all intelligence. The historian of philosophy must show that philosophy in

s forms we could hardly have expected to find. But it was Heraclitus' doctrine of Becoming that was most congenial to Ferrier, as it was to his great predecessor Hegel. Being and Not-Being, the unity of contraries as essential sides of Truth, in such conceptions as these Ferrier believes we come nearer to the truth of the universe than in the current views of philosophy, in which the unity of

d chosen to fight-the battle against sensationalism in Scotland, against materialism in the form in which he found it-rather than fairly to set before his readers an exact and accurate account of the teaching of the particular philosopher of whom he writes. But has it ever been otherwise in any history of thought that was ever written, excepting perhaps in some dryasdust compendium w

ly to understand their doctrines or appreciate the value and importance of their speculations.' And so Ferrier proceeds to prove the necessity for the existence of 'ideas'-of universals-as the absolute truth and groundwork of whatever is. No intelligence can be intelligent excepting by their light, and they are the necessary laws or principles on which all Being and Knowing are dependent. 'All philosophy,' he says of Plato, 'speculative and practical, has been foreshadowed by his prophetic intelligence; often dimly, but always so

vid Hume, or the popular idea that Berkeley denied all reality to matter. What he did deny was the reality which is supposed to lie beyond experience, and his criticism in this regard was invaluable as a basis for a future system. In his own words, he did not wish to change things into ideas, but ideas into things: matter could not exist independently of mind. But yet Ferrier is perfectly aware that Berkeley did not entirely grasp the absolute standpoint that the thing is the appearance, and the appearance is the thing. Regarded merely as a literary production, this article is entitled to rank with the classics of philosophic writings both as regards the beauty of its st

d little as to what so-called 'system' they adopted. He put his arguments clearly before them, but they were free to criticise as they would. And perhaps it was because they realised that the Truth was more to him than personal fame that their affection for him was so great. He always kept before him, too, that in teaching any science the mental discipline which it in

iousness,' and distinguish philosophy from mere opinion. It is mind which is the permanent and immutable in all change

s opponents; the other more systematic, more coordinated, firmer in its grasp. There was much to do if the system were to be shown to hold its place in every department of life, as an absolute system must: much that has not even yet been accomplished. But for those who came in contact with him, the man was more even than his creed-to them this frail form which seemed to be wasting away before their eyes, yet never l