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INTRODUCTION 7

EARLY LIFE 11

WANDERJAHRE--SOCIAL LIFE IN SCOTLAND--BEGINNING OF HIS LITERARY WORK 27

PHILOSOPHY BEFORE FERRIER'S DAY 41

'FIERCE WARRES AND FAITHFUL LOVES' 56

DEVELOPMENT OF 'SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY, THE OLD AND THE NEW'--FERRIER AS A CORRESPONDENT 72

FERRIER'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY--HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS 88

THE COLERIDGE PLAGIARISM--MISCELLANEOUS LITERARY WORK 106

PROFESSORIAL LIFE 122

LIFE AT ST. ANDREWS 138

LAST DAYS 152

JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Oliphant Smeaton has asked me to write a few words of preface to this little book. If I try, it is only because I am old enough to have had the privilege of knowing some of those who were most closely associated with Ferrier.

When I sat at the feet of Professor Campbell Fraser in the Metaphysics classroom at Edinburgh in 1875, Ferrier's writings were being much read by us students. The influence of Sir William Hamilton was fast crumbling in the minds of young men who felt rather than saw that much lay beyond it. We were still engrossed with the controversy, waged in books which now, alas! sell for a tenth of their former price, about the Conditioned and the Unconditioned. We still worked at Reid, Hamilton, and Mansel. But the attacks of Mill on the one side, and of Ferrier and Dr. Stirling on the other, were slowly but surely withdrawing our interest. Ferrier had pointed out a path which seemed to lead us in the direction of Germany if we would escape from Mill, and Stirling was urging us in the same sense. It was not merely that Ferrier had written books. He had died more than ten years earlier, but his personality was still a living influence. Echoes of his words came to us through Grant and Sellar. Outside the University, men like Blackwood and Makgill made us feel what a power he had been. But that was not all for at least some of us. Mrs. Ferrier had removed to Edinburgh--and I endorse all that my sister says of her rare quality. She lived in a house in Torphichen Street, which was the resort of those attracted, not only by the memory of her husband, but by her own great gifts. She was an old lady and an invalid. But though she could not move from her chair, paralysis had not dimmed her mental powers. She was a true daughter of 'Christopher North.' I doubt whether I have seen her rival in quickness, her superior I never saw. She could talk admirably to those sitting near her, and yet follow and join in the conversation of another group at the end of the room. She could adapt herself to everyone--to the shy and awkward student of eighteen, who like myself was too much in awe of her to do more unhelped than answer, and to the distinguished men of letters who came from every quarter attracted by her reputation for brilliance. The words of no one could be more incisive, the words of no one were habitually more kind than hers. She had known everybody. She forgot nobody. In those days the relation between Literature and the Parliament House, if less close than it had been, was more apparent than it is to-day, and distinguished Scottish judges and advocates mingled in the afternoon in the drawing-room, where she sat in a great arm-chair, with such men as Sellar and Stevenson and Grant and Shairp and Tulloch. But her personality was the supreme bond.

But even for others than the historians of the movement of Thought the books of Ferrier remain attractive. There is about them a certain atmosphere in which everything seems alive and fresh. Their author was no Dryasdust. He was a living human being, troubled as we are troubled, and interested in the things which interest us. He spoke to us, not from the skies, but from among a crowd of his fellow human beings, and we feel that he was one of ourselves. As such it is good that a memorial of him should be placed where it may easily be seen.

R. B. HALDANE.

EARLY LIFE

It may be a truism, but it is none the less a fact, that it is not always he of whom the world hears most who influences most deeply the thought of the age in which he lives. The name of James Frederick Ferrier is little heard of beyond the comparatively small circle of philosophic thinkers who reverence his memory and do their best to keep it green: to others it is a name of little import--one among a multitude at a time when Scotland had many sons rising up to call her blessed, and not perhaps one of the most notable of these. And yet, could we but estimate the value of work accomplished in the higher sphere of thought as we estimate it in the other regions of practical work--an impossibility, of course--we might be disposed to modify our views, and accord our praises in very different quarters from those in which they are usually bestowed.

James Ferrier wrote no popular books; he came before the public comparatively little; he made no effort to reconcile religion with philosophy on the one hand, or to propound theories startling in their unorthodoxy on the other. And still we may claim for him a place--and an honourable place--amongst the other Famous Scots, for the simple reason that after a long century of wearisome reiteration of tiresome platitudes--platitudes which had lost their original meaning even to the utterers of them, and which had become misleading to those who heard and thought they understood--Ferrier had the courage to strike out new lines for himself, to look abroad for new inspiration, and to hand on these inspirations to those who could work them into a truly national philosophy.

James Frederick Ferrier's mother, Margaret Wilson, was a sister of Professor John Wilson--the 'Christopher North' of immortal memory, whose daughter he was afterwards to marry. Margaret Ferrier was a woman of striking personal beauty. Her features were perfect in their symmetry, as is shown in a lovely miniature, painted by Saunders, a well-known miniature painter of the day, now in the possession of Professor Ferrier's son, her grandson. Many of these personal charms descended to James Ferrier, whose well-cut features bore considerable resemblance to his mother's. And his close connection with the Wilson family had the result of bringing the young man into association with whatever was best in literature and art. While yet a boy, we are told, he sat upon Sir Walter's knee; the Ettrick Shepherd had told him tales and recited Border ballads; while Lockhart took the trouble to draw pictures, as he only could, to amuse the child.

In surroundings such as these James Frederick Ferrier was born on the 16th day of June 1808, his birthplace being Heriot Row, in the new town of Edinburgh--a street which has been made historic to us by the recollections of another child who lived there long years afterwards, and who left the grey city of his birth to die far off in an island in the Pacific. But of Ferrier's child-life we know nothing: whether he played at 'tig' or 'shinty' with the children in the adjoining gardens, or climbed Arthur's Seat, or tried to scale the 'Cats' Nick' in the Salisbury Crags close by; or whether he was a grave boy, 'holding at' his lessons, or reading other books that interested him, in preference to his play. Ferrier did not dwell on these things or talk much of his youth; or if he did so, his words have been forgotten. What we do know are the barest facts: that his second name was given him in consideration of his father's friendship with Lord Frederick Campbell, Lord Clerk Register of Scotland; that his first name, as is usual in Scotland for an elder son, was his paternal grandfather's; and that he was sent to live with the Rev. Dr. Duncan, the parish minister of Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire, to receive his early education. Dr. Duncan of Ruthwell was a man of considerable ability and energy of character, though not famous in any special sphere of learning. He is well known, however, in the south of Scotland as the originator of Savings Banks there, and his works on the Seasons bear evidence of an interest in the natural world. At anyrate the time passed in Dumfriesshire would appear to have left pleasant recollections; for when Ferrier in later life alluded to it, it was with every indication of gratitude for the instruction which he received. He kept up his friendship with the sons of his instructor as years went on, and always expressed himself as deeply attached to the place where a happy childhood had been passed. Nor was learning apparently neglected, for Ferrier began his Latin studies at Ruthwell, and there first learned--an unusual lesson for so young a boy--to delight in the reading of the Latin poets, and of Virgil and Ovid in particular. After leaving Ruthwell, he attended the High School of Edinburgh, the great Grammar School of the metropolis, which was, however, soon to have a rival in another day school set up in the western part of the rapidly growing town; and then he was sent to school at Greenwich, where he was placed under the care of Dr. Burney, a nephew of the famous Fanny Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay. From school, as the manner of the time was, the boy passed to the University of Edinburgh at the age of seventeen,--older really than was customary in his day,--and here he remained for the two sessions 1825-26 and 1826-27, or until he was old enough to matriculate at Oxford. At Edinburgh, Ferrier distinguished himself in the class of Moral Philosophy, and carried off the prize of the year for a poem which was looked upon as giving promise of literary power afterwards fulfilled. His knowledge of Latin and Greek were considered good , but in mathematics he was nowhere. At Oxford he was entered in 1828 as a 'gentleman-commoner' at Magdalen College, the College of his future father-in-law, John Wilson. A gentleman-commoner of Magdalen in the earlier half of the century is not suggestive of severe mental exercise, and from the very little one can gather from tradition--for contemporaries and friends have naturally passed away--James Ferrier was no exception to the common rule. That he rode is very clear; the College was an expensive one, and he was probably inclined to be extravagant. Tradition speaks of his pelting the deer in Magdalen Park with eggs; but as to further distinction in more intellectual lines, record does not tell. In this respect he presents a contrast to his predecessor at Oxford, and friend of later days, Sir William Hamilton, whose monumental learning created him a reputation while still an undergraduate. Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne, was a contemporary of Ferrier's at Oxford; Sheriff Campbell Smith was at the bar of the House of Lords acting as Palmer's junior the day after Ferrier's death, and Sir Roundell told him that he remembered Ferrier well at College; he described him as 'careless about University work,' but as writing clever verses, several of which he repeated with considerable gusto. Of other friends the names alone are preserved, William Edward Collins, afterwards Collins-Wood of Keithick, Perthshire, who died in 1877, and J. P. Shirley of Ettington Park, in Warwickshire; but what influences were brought to bear upon him by his University life, or whether his interest in philosophical pursuits were in any way aroused during his time at College, we have no means of telling. A later friend, Henry Inglis, wrote of these early days: 'My friendship with Ferrier began about the time he was leaving Oxford, or immediately after he had left it--I should say about 1830 or thereabout. At that University I don't think he did anything more remarkable than contracting a large tailor's bill; which annoyed him for many years afterwards. At that time he was a wonderfully handsome, intellectual-looking young man,--a tremendous "swell" from top to toe, and with his hair hanging down over his shoulders.' Though later on in life this last characteristic was not so marked, Ferrier's photographs show his hair still fairly long and brushed off a finely-modelled square forehead, such as is usually associated with strongly developed intellectual faculties.

The gentlemen-commoners at Magdalen, as elsewhere, paid higher fees and wore a distinctive costume; at Magdalen they had a common room of their own, distinct from that of the Fellows, or the Demies or Scholars, and seldom read for honours. In Ferrier's days Magdalen College admitted no ordinary commoners, and there were but few resident undergraduates, many of the thirty demies being graduates and non-resident. In the year of his matriculation there were only ten gentlemen-commoners; thus, as far as undergraduates went, the College was a small one.

It is known that Ferrier took his Bachelor's degree in 1832, and that he had by that time managed to acquire a very tolerable knowledge of the classics and begun to study philosophy, so that his time could not have been entirely idle. For the rest, he probably passed happily through his years at College, as many others have done before and after him, without allowing more weighty cares to dwell upon his mind. Another friend of after days, the late Principal Tulloch, after noting the fact that Oxford had not then developed the philosophic spirit which in recent years has marked her schools, and which had not then taken root any more than the High Church movement which preceded it, goes on: 'It may be doubted, indeed, whether Oxford exercised any definite intellectual influence on Professor Ferrier. He had imbibed his love for the Latin poets before he went there, and his devotion to Greek philosophy was an after-growth with which he never associated his Magdalen studies. To one who visited the College with him many years afterwards, and to whom he pointed out with admiration its noble walks and trees, his associations with the place seemed to be mainly those of amusement. There is reason to think that few of those who knew him at Magdalen would have afterwards recognised him in the laborious student at St. Andrews, who for weeks together would scarcely cross the threshold of his study; and yet to all who knew him well, there was nevertheless a clear connection between the gay gownsman and the hard-working Professor.'

In 1832, Ferrier became an advocate at Edinburgh, but it does not appear that he had any serious idea of practising at the Bar. This is the period at which we know that the passion for metaphysical speculation laid hold of him,--a passion which is unintelligible and inexplicable to those who do not share in it,--and as Ferrier could not clearly say in what direction this was leading him, as far as practical life was concerned, he probably deemed it best to attach himself to a profession which left much scope to the adopter of it, to strike out lines of his own. What led Ferrier to determine to spend some months of the year 1834 at Heidelberg it would be extremely interesting to know. The friend first quoted writes: 'I cannot tell of the influences under which he devoted himself to metaphysics. My opinion is that there were none, but that he was a philosopher born. He attached himself at once to the fellowship of Sir William Hamilton, to whom he was introduced by a common friend--I think the late Mr. Ludovic Colquhoun. I know that he looked on Sir William at that time as his master.'

Perhaps, then, it was this intercourse with kindred spirits that caused Ferrier finally to determine to make philosophy the pursuit of his life--this combined, it may be, with the interest in letters which he could not fail to derive from his own immediate circle. He was in constant communication with Susan Ferrier, his aunt, who encouraged his literary bent to the utmost of her power. Then Professor Wilson, his uncle, though of a very different character from his own, attracted him by his brightness and wit--a brightness which he says he can hardly bring before himself, far less communicate to others who had not known him. Perhaps, as the same friend quoted before suggests, the attraction was partly due to another source. He says: 'How Ferrier got on with Wilson I never could divine; unless it were through the bright eyes of his daughter. Wilson and Ferrier seemed to me as opposite as the poles; the one all poetry, the other all prose. But the youth probably yielded to the mature majesty and genius of the man. Had they met on equal terms I don't think they could have agreed for ten minutes. As it was, they had serious differences at times, which, however, I believe were all ultimately and happily adjusted.'

The visits to his uncle's home, and the attractive young lady whom he there met, must have largely contributed to Ferrier's happiness in these years of mental fermentation. Such times come in many men's lives when youth is turning into manhood, and powers are wakening up within that seem as though they would lead us we know not whither. And so it may have been with Ferrier. But he was endowed with considerable calmness and self-command, combined with a confidence in his powers sufficient to carry him through many difficulties that might otherwise have got the better of him. Wilson's home, Elleray, near the Lake of Windermere, was the centre of a circle of brilliant stars. Ferrier recollected, while still a lad of seventeen years of age, meeting there at one time, in the summer of 1825, Scott, Wordsworth, Lockhart, and Canning, a conjunction difficult to beat. Once more, we are told, and on a sadder occasion, he came into association with the greatest Scottish novelist. 'It was on that gloomy voyage when the suffering man was conveyed to Leith from London, on his return from his ill-fated foreign journey. Mr. Ferrier was also a passenger, and scarcely dared to look on the almost unconscious form of one whose genius he so warmly admired.' The end was then very near.

This meeting occurred after the Irish tour of Scott, Miss Anne Scott, and Lockhart, when they visited Wilson at Elleray. Canning was staying at Storre, in the neighbourhood.

Professor Ferrier's daughter tells us that long after, in the summer of 1856, the family went to visit the English Lakes, the centre of attraction being Elleray, Mr. Ferrier's old home and birthplace. 'The very name of Elleray breathes of poetry and romance. Our father and mother had, of course, known it in its glorious prime, when our grandfather, "Christopher North," wrestled with dalesmen, strolled in his slippers with Wordsworth to Keswick , and kept his ten-oared barge in the long drawing-room of Elleray. In these days they had "rich company," and the names of Southey, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Coleridge were to them familiar household words. The cottage my mother was born in still stands, overshadowed by a giant sycamore.'

We can easily imagine the effect which society such as this would have on a young man's mind. But more than that, the friendship with the attractive cousin, Margaret Wilson, developed into something warmer, and an engagement was finally formed, which culminated in his marriage in 1837. Not many of James Ferrier's letters to his cousin during the long engagement have been preserved; the few that are were written from Germany in 1834, the year in which he went to Heidelberg; they were addressed to Thirlstane House, near Selkirk, where Miss Wilson was residing, and they give a lively account of his adventures.

WANDERJAHRE--SOCIAL LIFE IN SCOTLAND--BEGINNING OF HIS LITERARY LIFE

In the present century in Germany we have seen a period of almost unparalleled literary glory succeeded by a time of great commercial prosperity and national enthusiasm. But when Ferrier visited that country in 1834 the era of its intellectual greatness had hardly passed away; some, at least, of its stars remained, and others had very recently ceased to be. Goethe had died just two years before, but Heine lived till many years afterwards; amongst the philosophers, though Kant and Fichte, of course, were long since gone, Schelling was still at work at Munich, and Hegel lived at Berlin till November of 1831, when he was cut off during an epidemic of cholera. Most of the great men had disappeared, and yet the memory of their achievements still survived, and the impetus they gave to thought could not have been lost. The traditional lines of speculation consistently carried out since Reformation days had survived war and national calamity, and it remained to be seen whether the greater tests of prosperity and success would be as triumphantly undergone.

We can imagine Ferrier's feelings when this new world opened up before him, a Scottish youth, to whom it was a new, untrodden country. It may be true that it was his literary rather than his speculative affinities that first attracted him to Germany. To form in literature he always attached the greatest value, and to the end his interest in letters was only second to his attachment to philosophy. German poetry was to him what it was to so many of the youth of the country from which it came--the expression of their deepest, and likewise of their freshest aspiration. The poetry of other countries and other tongues--English and Latin, for example--meant much to him, but that of Germany was nearest to his heart. French learning did not attract him; neither its literature nor its metaphysics and psychological method appealed to his thoughtful, analytic mind; but in Germany he found a nation which had not as yet resigned its interest in things of transcendental import in favour of what pertained to mere material welfare.

Such was the Germany into which Ferrier came in 1834. He did not, so far as we can hear, enter deeply into its social life; he visited it as a traveller, rather than as a student, and his stay in it was brief. Considering the shortness of his time there, and the circumstances of his visit, the impression that it made upon him is all the more remarkable, for it was an impression that lasted and was evident throughout all his after life. Since his day, indeed, it would be difficult to say how many young Scotsmen have been impressed in a similar way by a few months' residence at a University town in Germany. For partly owing to Ferrier's own efforts, and perhaps even more owing to the 'boom'--to use a vulgarism--brought about by Carlyle's writings, and by his first making known the marvels of German literature to the ordinary English-speaking public, who had never learned the language or tried to understand its recent history, the old traditional literary alliance between Scotland and France appeared for the time being to have broken down in favour of a similar association with its rival country, Germany. The work of Goethe was at last appreciated, nothing was now too favourable to say about its merits; philosophy was suddenly discovered to have its home in Germany, and there alone; our insularity in keeping to our antiquated methods--dryasdust, we were told, as the old ones of the schools, and perhaps as edifying--was vigorously denounced. Theology, which had hitherto found complete support from the philosophic system which acted as her handmaid, and was only tolerated as such, was naturally affected in like manner by the change; and to her credit be it said, that instead of with averted eyes looking elsewhere, as might easily have been done, she determined to face the worst, and wisely asked the question whether in her department too she had not something she could learn from a sister country across the sea. Hence a great change was brought about in the mental attitude of Scotland; but we anticipate.

'I could not get a letter to Lord Corehouse's German sister , as it seems she is in bad health, and not fit to entertain vagabonds; but I enclose a very kind one from my friend, Mrs. Erskine, to the ambassadress at Munich, and if you don't go there you may send it by post, as it will be welcome at any time on its own account.'

It was in 1837 that Ferrier married the young lady with whom he had so long corresponded. The marriage was in all respects a happy one. Mrs. Ferrier's gifts and graces, inherited from her father, will not soon be forgotten, either in St. Andrews where she lived so long, or in Edinburgh, the later home of her widowhood. One whose spirits were less gay might have found a husband whose interests were so completely in his work--and that a work in which she could not share--difficult to deal with; but she possessed understanding to appreciate that work, as well as humour, and could accommodate herself to the circumstances in which she found herself; while he, on his part, entered into the gaiety on occasion with the best. A friend and student of the St. Andrews' days writes of Ferrier: 'He married his cousin Margaret, Professor's Wilson's daughter, and I don't doubt that a shorthand report of their courtship would have been better worth reading than nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand courtships, for she had wit as well as beauty, and he was capable of appreciating both. No more charming woman have I ever seen or heard making game of mankind in general, and in particular of pedants and hypocrites. She would even laugh at her husband on occasion, but it was dangerous for any volunteer to try to help her in that sport. A finer-looking couple I have never seen.

Another sister married William Edmondstoune Aytoun, the poet. It was regarding Professor Aytoun's proposal for Miss Wilson's hand that the following story is told. When the engagement was being formed, Aytoun somewhat demurred to interviewing the father of the lady, and she herself undertook the mission. Presently she returned with a card pinned upon her breast bearing the satisfactory inscription, 'With the author's compliments'! Aytoun, as is well known, was extremely plain, and it was of his bust in the Blackwoods' saloon, a recognisable but idealistic likeness, that Ferrier remarked, 'I should call that the pursuit of beauty under difficulties.'

Before entering, however, on any consideration of Ferrier's writings and of the philosophy of the day, it might be worth while to try to picture to ourselves the social conditions and feelings of the time, in order that we may get some idea of the influences which surrounded him, and be assisted in our efforts to understand his outlook.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century Scotland had been ground down by a strange tyranny--the tyranny of one man as it seemed, which man was Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, who for many long years ruled our country as few countries have been ruled before. What this despotism meant it is difficult for us, a century later, to figure to ourselves. All offices were dependent on his patronage; it was to him that everyone had to look for whatever post, advancement, or concession was required. And Dundas, with consummate power and administrative ability, moulded Scotland to his will, and by his own acts made her what she was before the world. But all the while, though unperceived, a new spirit was really dawning; the principles of the Revolution, in spite of everything, had spread, and all unobserved the time-spirit made its influence felt below a surface of apparent calm. It laid hold first of all of the common people--weavers and the like: it roused these rough, uneducated men to a sense of wrong and the resolution to seek a remedy. Not much, however, was accomplished. Some futile risings took place--risings pitiable in their inadequacy--of hard-working weavers armed with pikes and antiquated muskets. Of course, such rebels were easily suppressed; the leaders were sentenced to execution or transportation, as the case might be; but though peace apparently was restored and public meetings to oppose the Government were rigorously suppressed, trade and manufactures were arising: Scotland was not really dead, as she appeared. A new life was dawning: reform was in the air, and in due time made its presence felt. But the memory of these times of political oppression, when the franchise was the privilege of the few, and of the few who were entirely out of sympathy with the most part of their countrymen or their country's wants, remained with the people just as did the 'Killing-time' of Covenanting days two centuries before. Time heals the wounds of a country as of an individual, but the operation is slow, and it is doubtful whether either period of history will ever be forgotten. At anyrate, if they are so as this century closes, they were not in the Scotland known to Ferrier; they were still a very present memory and one whose influence was keenly felt.

And along with this political struggle yet another struggle was taking place, no less real though not so evident. The religion of the country had been as dead as was the politics in the century that was gone--dead in the sleep of Moderatism and indifferentism. But it, too, had awakened; the evangelical school arose, liberty of church government was claimed, a liberty which, when denied it, rent the Established Church in twain.

In our country it has been characteristic that great movements have usually begun with those most in touch with its inmost life, the so-called lower orders of its citizens. The nobles and the kings have rather followed than taken the lead. In the awakening of the present century this at anyrate was the case. 'Society,' so called, remained conservative in its view for long after the people had determined to advance. Scott, it must be remembered, was a retrogressive influence. The romanticism of his novels lent a charm to days gone by which might or might not be deserved; but they also encouraged their readers to imagine a revival of those days of chivalry as a possibility even now, when men were crying for their rights, when they had awakened to a sense of their possessions, and would take nothing in their place. The real chieftains were no more; they were imitation chieftains only who were playing at the game, and it was a game the clansmen would not join in. Few exercises could be more strange than first to read the account of Scottish life in one of the immortal novels by Scott dealing with last century, and then to turn to Miss Ferrier or Galt, depicting a period not so very different. Setting aside all questions of genius, where comparison would be absurd, it would seem as if a beautiful enamel had been removed, and a bare reality revealed, somewhat sordid in comparison. The life was not really sordid,--realism as usual had overshot its mark,--but the enamel had been somewhat thickly laid, and might require to be removed, if truth were to be revealed.

So in the higher grades of Edinburgh society the enamel of gentility has done its best to prejudice us against much true and genuine worth. It was characterised by a certain conventional unconventionality, a certain 'preciosity' which brought it near deserving a still stronger name, and it maintained its right to formulate the canons of criticism for the kingdom. Edinburgh, it must be recollected, was no 'mean city,' no ordinary provincial town. It was still esteemed a metropolis. It had its aristocracy, though mainly of the order of those unable to bear the greater expense of London life. It had no manufactories to speak of, no mercantile class to 'vulgarise' it; it possessed a University, and the law courts of the nation. But above all it had a literary society. In the beginning of the century it had such men as Henry Mackenzie, Dugald Stewart, John Playfair, Dr. Gregory, Dr. Thomas Brown, not to speak of Scott and Jeffrey--a society unrivalled out of London. And in later days, when these were gone, others rose to fill their places.

Of course, in addition to the movement of the working people, there was an educated protest against Toryism, and it was made by a party who, to their credit be it said, risked their prospects of advancement for the principles of freedom. In their days Toryism, we must recollect, meant something very different from what it might be supposed to signify in our own. It meant an attitude of obstruction as regards all change from established standards of whatever kind; it signified a point of view which said that grievances should be unredressed unless it was in its interest to redress them. The new party of opposition included in its numbers Whig lawyers like Gibson Craig and Henry Erskine, in earlier days, and Francis Jeffrey and Lord Cockburn later on; a party of progress was also formed within the Church, and the same within the precincts of the University. The movement, as became a movement on the political side largely headed by lawyers, had no tendency to violence; it was moderate in its policy, and by no means revolutionary--indeed it may be doubted whether there ever was much tendency to revolt even amongst those working men who expressed themselves most strongly. The advance party, however, carried the day, and when Ferrier began to write, Scotland was in a very different state from that of twenty years before. The Reform Bill had passed, and men had the moulding of their country's destiny practically placed within their hands. In the University, again, Sir William Hamilton, a Whig, had just been appointed to the Chair of Logic, while Moncreiff, Chalmers, and the rest, were prominent in the Church. The traditions of literary Edinburgh at the beginning of the century had been kept up by a circle amongst whom Lockhart, Wilson, and De Quincey may be mentioned; now Carlyle, who had left Edinburgh not long before, was coming into notice, and a new era seemed to be dawning, not so glorious as the past, but more untrammelled and more free.

How philosophy was affected by the change, and how Ferrier assisted in its progress, it is our business now to tell; but we must first briefly sketch the history of Scottish speculation to this date, in order to show the position in which he found it.

PHILOSOPHY BEFORE FERRIER'S DAY

In attempting to give some idea of philosophy as it was in Scotland in the earlier portion of the present century, we shall have to go back two hundred years 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 succession of systems following one upon another as their propounders might decree; it is a development in the truest and highest significance of that word. It means the gradual working out of the questions which reason sets to be answered; and though it seems as if we had sometimes to turn our faces backwards, and to revert to systems of bygone days, we always find, when we look more closely, that in our onward course we have merely dropped some thread in our web, the recovery of which is requisite in order that it may be duly taken up and woven with the rest.

At the time of which we write the so-called 'Scottish School' of Reid, Stewart, and Beattie reigned supreme in orthodox Scotland; it had undisputed power in the Universities, and besides 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 is its history and place that we wish shortly to describe. To do so, however, it is needful to go back to its real founder, Locke, in order that its point of view may fairly be set forth.

Berkeley followed out the logical consequences of Locke, though perhaps he hardly knew where these would carry him. He acknowledged that we know nothing but ideas--nothing outside of our mind. But he adds the conception of self, and by analogy the conception of God, who acts as a principle of causation. Whether there is necessary connection in his sensations or not, he does not say. Hume followed with criticism, scathing and merciless. He states that all we know of is 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 experience allows. Custom merely brings about certain conclusions which are often enough misleading. It connects effect and cause, really different events: it brings about ideas of morality very often deceptive. We have our custom of regarding things, another has his--who can say which is correct? All we can do is, what seems a hopeless task enough--we can try to show how these unrelated particulars seem by repetition to produce an illusionary connection in our minds.

Both mind and matter appear, then, to be wanting, and experience alone is suggested as the means of solving the difficulty in which we are placed--a point in the argument which 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 not be more successful with things. But it is the Scottish lines of attempted solution that we wish to follow out, and not the German. Perhaps they are not so very different.

Philosophy, as Reid found it, was in a bad way enough, as far as the orthodox mind of Scotland was concerned. All justification for belief in God, in immortality, in all that was held sacred in a century of much orthodoxy if little zeal, was gone. Such things 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 of permanent scepticism, in a world utterly incapable of being rationally explained. Even the propounder of the theories allowed this to be true; and as for others, they felt that they were rational beings, and this signified that there was system in the world.

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