It is probably in the main a wise rule for defeated candidates to keep silence about the cause of their defeat. But every rule has its exception, and there are times in which we honour a man none 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 the Chair of Moral Philosophy for which he was a candidate; but then he had not published the work which has made his name famous, and his claims were therefore not what afterwards they became. But when in 1856, after the Institutes had been two years before the public, and just after the book had reached a second edition, another defeat followed on the first, Ferrier ascribed the 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 orthodoxy, or want of orthodoxy, of his views. For this reason he issued a 'Statement' in pamphlet form, entitled Scottish Philosophy, the Old and the New, dealing with the matter at length.
In Ferrier's view, a serious crisis had been arrived at in the history of the University of Edinburgh, and one which might lead to yet further evil were not something done to place matters on a better footing. Had the Town Council, the electing body, been affected simply by personal or sectarian feelings, it would not so much have mattered; but when Ferrier was forced to the conclusion that what they did must 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 originality was to be proscribed and independence utterly forbidden? Through their liberalism tests had been practically abolished: was another test, far more exacting than the last, to be substituted in their place? A candidate for a philosopher's chair need not be a believer in Christ or a member of the Established Church; but he must, it would appear, believe in Dr. Reid and the Hamiltonian system of philosophy.
The 'common-sense' school, against which Ferrier's attacks were mainly directed, too often found its satisfaction in commonplace statements of obvious facts, and we cannot wonder that Ferrier should ask why Scottish students should be required to pay for 'bottled air' while the whole atmosphere is 'floating with liquid balm that could be had for 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 discourses: loose ways of thinking which we ordinarily adopt must, he considers, be rectified and not confirmed. And yet he disclaims the accusation that he has conjured with 'the portentous name of Hegel,' or derived his system from German soil. Hegel, he constantly confesses, is frequently to him inexplicable, and his system is Scottish to the core.
A warm debt of gratitude to Hamilton, Ferrier, it is true, acknowledges even while he differs from his views—a debt to one whose 'soul could travel on eagles' wings,' and from whom he had learned so much—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 recanting at his word the conclusions of a lifetime's labour. Provocation, the younger man acknowledges, he had often given him, and 'never was such rough provocation retaliated with such gentle spleen.'
But what most roused Ferrier's ire was, not the criticisms of men like Hamilton, but such as were contained in a pamphlet published by the Rev. Mr. Cairns of Berwick, afterwards Principal Cairns of the United Presbyterian College—a pamphlet which he believed had biassed the judgment of the electors in making their decision. We now know that indirectly they had requested Mr. Cairns's advice, 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 material world and the mind, and that (and probably this is the most serious count in the charge) the substantiality of the mind was subverted, and consequently belief in personal identity rendered impossible. He further said that by Ferrier absolute existence is reduced to a mere relation, and finally, that his conception of a Deity is inadequate, and metaphysics and natural theology are divorced.
We cannot, of course, deal in detail with Ferrier's energetic repudiation of the accusation brought so specifically against him. The heat with which he wrote seems scarcely justified now that we look back on it from the standpoint of more than forty years ahead. But we do not realise how much such accusations meant at the time at which they were made—how they affected not a man's personal advancement only, but also the opinion in which he was held by those for whose opinion he cared the most. The greater toleration of the present day may mean corresponding lack of zeal or interest, but surely it also means a recognition of the fact that men may choose their own methods in the search 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 consciousness amid the changes of the unfluctuating existence called the 'I'—though in this regard one feels that something is left to say in criticism, from the orthodox point of view. Absolute existence is indeed reduced into relations, but into relations together constituting the truth, if contradictory in themselves; that is, a concrete, as distinguished from an abstract truth. As to the final accusation of the insufficiency of Ferrier's view of the Deity, it is true he states that the Deity is not independent of His creative powers, revelation and manifestation; but surely this is a worthier conception than the old one of the Unknown God, which tells us to worship we know not what.
The pity is that in this publication, and another on very similar lines,[9] Ferrier allowed himself to turn from philosophical to personal criticism, and to say what he must afterwards have regretted. In the second edition of his first pamphlet these references were modified, and in any case they must be ascribed to the quick temper with which he was naturally endowed, and which led him to express his feelings 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 oftener, or is more disposed to commit it than myself; but I am certain that it is not pleasing to the reader, and after an interval it is displeasing to oneself. In the heat and hurry of writing a lecture I often hit a brother philosopher as I think cleverly enough, but on coming to it coolly next year I very seldom repeat the passage.' An admission and acknowledgment which does a proud man like Ferrier credit.
One cannot help speculating on the effect of the mass of criticism and counter-criticism (for there were others who took up the cudgels on either side, once the controversy was fairly started) upon the unfortunate Town Councillors of Edinburgh, to whom they were directed: one would imagine them to wish their powers curtailed if they were to involve their mastering several conflicting 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 one who did everything in the occupation of his chair to disarm the criticism then brought to bear upon the appointment. In cooler moments probably none would have been readier to admit this than was Ferrier; but when he wrote he was smarting under the sense of having failed to receive a fair consideration of his claims, and he undoubtedly spoke more strongly than the case required.
After this controversy was over, Ferrier's interest in polemical philosophy in great degree waned; and in the quiet of the old University town of St. Andrews—the town which provides so rich a fund of historic interest combined with the academic calm of University life—Ferrier passed the remainder of his days working at his favourite subjects. Sometimes these were varied by incursions into literature, in which 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 preserved; and this is the more unfortunate that he had the gift, now comparatively so rare, of expressing himself with ease, and in bright, well-chosen language. Of his correspondents one only seems to have preserved the letters written to him, Mr. George Makgill of Kemback, a neighbouring laird in Fife and advocate in Edinburgh, whose similarity in tastes drew him towards the St. Andrews Philosophy Professor.
Of these letters there are some of sufficient interest to bear quotation. One of the first is written in October 1851 from St. Andrews, and plunges into the deepest topics without much preface. Ferrier says:—
'What is the Beginning of Philosophy? Philosophy must have had the same Beginning that all other things have, otherwise there would be something peculiar or anomalous or sectarian in its origin, which would destroy its claims to genuineness and catholicity. What, then, is the Beginning of all things and consequently the Beginning of Philosophy?
'Answer—Want.
'Want is the Beginning of Philosophy because it is the Beginning of all things. Is the Beginning of Philosophy a bodily want? No. Why not? Because nothing that may be given to the Body has any effect in appeasing the want. The Beginning of Philosophy, then, must be an intellectual want—a Hunger of the Soul.
'But all wants have their objects in which they seek and find their gratification. What then is the object of the hunger of the soul?
'Answer—Knowledge.
'Philosophy is a Hunger of the Soul after Knowledge. What is Knowledge?—reduced through various intermediate stages to question, what is the common and essential quality in all knowledge—the quality which makes knowledge knowledge? Answer approached by raising question: What is the essential quality in all food—the quality 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 its nutritive quality. Whatever nourishes and satisfies the mind is knowledge, as whatever nourishes and satisfies the body is food. The intellectually nutritive property in knowledge is the common and essential property in knowledge. What is the nutritive quality in knowledge? Answer (without beating about the bush)—Truth.
'What is Truth? Answer—Truth is whatever is supported by Evidence.
'What is Evidence? Evidence is whatever is supported by Experience. What is Experience? Here we stop; we can only divide Experience into its kinds, which are two, Experience of Fact and Experience of Pure Reason. Observe the manœuvre in the last line by which you knaves of the anti-metaphysical school are outwitted. You 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 clouds. But I do not abandon experience as the ultimate foundation of all knowledge; only I maintain that there are two kinds of experience, both of which are equally experience, the experience of Fact and the experience of Pure Reason. You are thus deprived of your advantage. I am as much a man of experience as you are.'
Evidently it had been a question with Ferrier whether he should use the expression Experience, so well known to us now, or substitute for it Consciousness, which, as a matter of fact, he afterwards did: 'Why is it so grievous 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 swithering (and am so still) whether I should not make consciousness the basis of the whole superstructure—the raw material of the article which in its finished state is knowledge. After all, the dispute, I suspect, is mainly verbal.'
There are many evidences in these letters that Ferrier was not neglecting German Philosophy, for taking Experience as his basis he shows how it may be divided into Wesen (an sich), Seyn (für sich), and the Begriff (anundfürsich) on the lines of German metaphysics. As to the 'Common-Sense' Philosophy, he expresses himself in no measured terms: 'I am glad we agree in opinion as to the merits of the Common-Sense Philosophy. 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-sense to consist in this, that its judgments are not conclusions obtained by ratiocination (Works, Sir W. Hamilton's edition, p. 425), Stewart, on the contrary, holds that these judgments are "the result of a train of reasoning so rapid as to escape notice" (Elements, vol. ii. p. 103). Sir W.'s one hundred and six witnesses are a most conglomerate set, and a little cross-examination would try their mettle severely.'
The most important part of Ferrier's system was his working out of the 'Theory of Ignorance,' in which, indeed, he might congratulate himself in having in great measure broken open new ground. He says of it: 'Hurrah, εύρηκα, I have discovered the Law of Ignorance—and if I had a hecatomb of kain hens at my command I would sacrifice them instanter to the propitious patron of metaphysics. Look you here. The Law of Knowledge is this, that, in order to know any one thing we must always know two things; hoc cum alio—object plus subject—thing + me. This is the unit of knowledge. Analogously, only inversely, in order to be ignorant of any one thing we must be ignorant of two things—hujus cum alio—object plus 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 can with any sense or propriety be said to be ignorant. Be this as it may, you must at anyrate recognise in this doctrine a very great novelty in philosophy. The more incogitable a thing becomes, the more ignorant of it do we become—that is the natural supposition. Is it not then a bold and original stroke to show that when a thing passes into absolute incogitability we cease that instant to be ignorant of it? I believe that doctrine to be right and true, but I am certain that, obvious as it is, it has been nowhere anticipated or even hinted at in the bygone career of speculation. I claim this as my discovery. In the doctrine of Ignorance I believe that I have absolutely no precursor. What think you?'
Mr. Makgill had accused Ferrier of anthropomorphism in his system, and he replies as follows:—'You cannot charge me with anthropomorphism without being guilty of it yourself. Don't you see that "the Beyond" all human thought and knowledge is itself a category of human thought? There is much naïveté in the procedure of you cautious gentry who would keep scrupulously within the length of your tether: as if the conception of a without that tether was not a mode of thinking. Will you tell me why you and Kant and others don't make existence a category of human thought? This has always puzzled me.
'Surely the man who made extension and time mere forms of human knowledge need have made no bones of existence. Meanwhile, as the post is just starting, I beg you to consider this, that the anthropomorphist and the anti-anthropomorphists 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 acknowledged, is as much to the point in the present day as it was in those, and its statement brings forcibly before our minds the truth of Goethe's well-known saying: 'Der Mensch begreift niemals wie anthropomorphisch er ist.'
The doctrine of Ignorance, so essential to Ferrier's system, he found it hard to make clear to others:—'I am astonished at your not seeing the use, indeed the absolute necessity, of a true doctrine of ignorance. This blindness of yours shows me what I may expect from the public; and how careful I must be, if I would go down at all, to render myself perfectly clear and explicit. Don't you see that a correct doctrine of ignorance is necessary for two reasons—first, on account of the false doctrine of ignorance universally prevalent, one which has hitherto rendered, and must ever render, anything like a scientific ontology impossible; and, secondly, because this correct theory of ignorance follows inevitably from my doctrine of knowledge? This, which I consider a very strong recommendation, an indispensable condition of the theory of ignorance, is the very 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 philosopher drawing, but most erroneously, the directly opposite conclusion from the same premises. Matter per se, Ding an sich, was of all things that of which we were most ignorant!! and the ruin of metaphysics was the consequence of their infatuated blindness. Your objection, then, to my doctrine of ignorance, viz., that it is fixed in the very fixing of the doctrine of knowledge, and therefore does not require explication or elucidation, I cannot regard as a good objection. It is true that the one of these fixes the other; but it requires some amount of explanation and demonstration to make this palpable to the understandings even of the most acute, and I am not sure that even you (yes, put on your best pair of spectacles, you will need them) yet see how impossible it is for us to be ignorant of matter per se, or of anything which is absolutely unknowable.'
This matter of the Ding an sich Ferrier felt to be the crucial point in his system: 'You talk glibly of "existence per se," as maids of fifteen do of 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 sham fights and listened to the shotless popguns of the martinet of Königsberg. You will find existence per se a tougher customer than you imagine.'
As to the Institutes, then on the verge of publication, the author says: 'I am inclined to follow your advice, so far, in regard to the title of the work, and to call it the "Theory of Knowing and Being," 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 called a text-book of metaphysics, meaning thereby, that it is a complete body (and soul) of metaphysics. You are an uncommonly modest fellow in so far as the protestations of your friends are concerned!'
This correspondence appears to have continued regularly for some years, and to have dealt almost entirely with metaphysical and economic subjects—the subjects which were constantly in Ferrier's mind, as he taught them 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 afforded by his friendship with his correspondent, whose interest in philosophy was keen, and whose critical faculties were exceptionally acute, although he never accomplished any original work on philosophical lines.
Of other letters few have been preserved. Absence from home did not make a reason for writing, for Ferrier's journeyings were but few. In 1859, however, he made an expedition to England to see his newly-married daughter, Lady Grant, start for India with her husband, Sir Alexander Grant, after his appointment to the Chancellorship 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 fish was utter trash, the best of them not comparable to Loch Fyne herring. Whitebait is the greatest humbug of the age, though it may be heresy to say so in your neighbourhood.' This journey was concluded by a visit to Oxford and to the Lake country, with both of which Ferrier's associations were so many and so agreeable.
The following is a letter, dated 21st March 1862, to Professor Lushington, his friend and biographer:—'I have been very remiss in not acknowledging your photograph, which came safe, and is much admired by all who have seen it. I must get a book for its reception and that of some other worthies, 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 fixed and determined? Depend upon it, that is the true nature of a spirit—never to be any determinate existence. This is our real immutability—for death can get hold only of that which has a determinate being. We stand loose from all determinations. That is our chance of escaping his clutches."
This expresses Ferrier's views and hopes for an after life: he looked forward to an immortality in which the particular and determinate should disappear and only the absolute element 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 a very similar nature. We shall see how, when the end was coming near, his views remained the same, and he was able to face the inevitable without a qualm or shadow of complaint.
'If one were asked,' says Professor Fraser, 'for the English writings which are fitted in the most attractive way to absorb a reader of competent intelligence and imagination 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 into Human Understanding, and some of the lately published Philosophical Remains of Professor Ferrier are probably those which would best deserve to be mentioned.'
It has been given to few philosophers of modern days to write on philosophic questions in a manner at once so lucid and so convincing as that of Ferrier. Nor can it in his case be said that matter is sacrificed to form, for the writer does not hesitate to 'nail his colours to the mast,' as he himself expresses it, and to tackle 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 Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness, represented the results of their author's work during the years which had elapsed since he first began to be really interested in philosophy, and to feel that the way of looking at it adopted almost universally in Scotland was not satisfying to himself, or in any way defensible.
The whole point in Ferrier's view turns upon the way in which we look at 'Mind.' 'The human mind, to speak it profanely,' says Ferrier, 'is like the goose that laid the golden eggs. The metaphysician resembles the analytic poulterer who slew it to get at them in a lump, and found nothing for his pains…. Look at thought, and feeling, and passion, as they glow in the pages of Shakespeare—golden eggs indeed! Look at the same as they stagnate on the dissecting-table of Dr. Brown, and marvel at the change. Behold how shapeless and extinct they have become!' Locke began by saying there are no original ideas, simply impressions from without; Hume then 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 mind.' Dr. Reid had done a service by exploding the old doctrine of 'ideas'; he brought mind into contact with immediate things, but much more is left for us to do; the same office has to be performed for 'mind'—that is, mind when we regard it as something which connects us with the universe, or something which can be looked at and examined, as we might look at or examine a thing outside ourselves, and not as that which is necessary to any such examination. 'Is it not enough for a man that he is himself? There can be no dispute about that. I am; what more would I have? What more would I be? Why would I be mind? I am myself therefore let it perish.'
What, then, makes a man what he is? It is the fact of consciousness, the fact which marks him off from all other things with a deep line of separation. It is this and this alone, Ferrier says, this 'human phenomenon,' and not its 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 new; we are always straying into devious ways, ways that lead us into grey regions of abstraction, and we always want to be called back to the concrete and the real, to the freshness and the brightness of life as it is and lives.
Ferrier from this time onwards, from his youth until his death, kept one definite aim in view: the object of his life was to insist with all his might that our interests must be concentrated on man as he is as man, and not on a mere sum-total of passions and sensations by which the human being is affected. The consciousness of a state of mind is very different from that state of mind itself, and the two must be kept absolutely distinct. 'Let mind have the things 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,' mind may be what it chooses, but the consciousness is in the ego; and mind is really destitute of consciousness, otherwise the ego would necessarily be present in it. The dilemma is as follows: 'Unless the philosophers of mind attribute consciousness to mind, they leave out of view the most important phenomena of man; and if they attribute consciousness to mind, they annihilate the object of their research, in so far as the whole extent of this fact is concerned.'
Since Ferrier's time this point has been worked out very fully, and by none more successfully than by an English philosopher, Professor T. H. Green of Oxford, in his Introduction to the works of Hume. But when Ferrier wrote, his ideas were new; in England at least he was breaking up ground hitherto untouched, and therefore the debt of gratitude we owe him is not small, especially when we consider the forces against which he warred. 'Common-sense,' the solution offered for all philosophic difficulties, is really the problem of philosophy, and to speak of the 'philosophy of common-sense' is simply to confuse the problem with its solution. 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 by it, of 'recovering the balance' that it loses on experiencing pain or passion; the return of consciousness, as he puts it, 'lowers the temperature' of the sensation or the passion, and the man regains the personality that for the time had almost vanished. A man, he tells us, can hardly even be said to be the 'victim' of his mind, and irresponsible—i.e., man stands aloof from the modifications which may visit him, therefore we should study him as he is, and not merely these 'states of mind' common to him and to animals alike. And consciousness must be active, exercising itself upon those states, and thereby realising human freedom.
Philosophy, then, is the gospel of freedom as contrasted with the bondage of the physical kingdom. But we are in subjection at the first, and all our lifetime a constant fight is being carried on. Philosophy paints its grey in grey, another great philosopher has told us, only when the 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 freedom's flowers. To act according to thy inclination may be enjoyment; but know that to act against it is liberty, and thou only actest thus because thou art really free.' Great and weighty words, which might be pondered by many more than those to whom they were originally addressed.
Having established his fundamental principles, Ferrier goes on to trace the birth of self-consciousness in the child—the knowledge of itself as 'I,' which means the knowledge of good and evil—the moral birth. Perception, again, is a synthesis of sensation and consciousness—the realisation of self in conjunction with the sensation experienced: it is, of course, peculiar to man. Things can only take effect on 'me' when there is a 'me' to take effect upon, and not at birth, or before I come to consciousness. Consciousness is the very essence and origin of the ego; without consciousness no man would be 'I.' It 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 arises out of his actions: consciousness being an act, our proper existence is the consequence of that act. His natural condition for others, and before he comes to existence, Ferrier says, is given, while his existence for himself is made by his thinking himself. It is only in the latter case that he can attain to Liberty, instead of remaining bound by the bonds imposed upon him by Necessity. The three great moments of humanity are: first, the natural or given man in enslaved Being; second, the conscious man in action working into freedom against passion; third, the 'I': man as free, that is, real personal Being.
Philosophy has thus a great future before her. Instead of being a mere dead theory as heretofore, she becomes renovated into a new life when she gets her proper place; she is separated from her supposed connection with the physical world, and is recognised as consciousness. When this is so, she loses her merely theoretic aspect, and is identified with the living practical interests of mankind. The 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 finds in morality something more than a refined self-love; he finds the dawning will endeavouring to assert itself, to break free from the trammels imposed upon it by nature. Freedom, the great end of man, is contravened by the passive conditions of his nature; these are therefore wrong, and every act of resistance tends to the accomplishment of the one important end, which is to procure his liberty.
This essay, or series of essays, gives the keynote to Ferrier's thought and writings, therefore it seemed worth while to consider its argument in detail. The completeness of the break with the old philosophy is manifest. The 'scientific' methods applied to every region of knowledge were then in universal use, and no little courage was required to challenge their pretensions as they were challenged by Ferrier. But in courage, as we 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 undoubtedly required before it could be said that a system had been established. But all the same this essay is a brilliant piece of philosophic writing—instinct with life and enthusiasm—one which must have made its readers feel that the dry bones of a dead system had wakened into life, and that what they had imagined an abstract and dismal science had become instinct with living, practical interest—something to be 'lived' as well as studied.
The Institutes of Metaphysics—the work by which Ferrier's name will descend to posterity—is a development of the Philosophy of Consciousness; but it is more carefully reasoned out and systematised—the result of many years of thoughtful labour. For several years before the work was published (in 1854) the propositions which are contained in it were developed in the course of Ferrier'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, and what the writer proposed to give. The divisions into which he separates Philosophy are: first, the Epistemology, or theory of knowledge; secondly, the Agnoiology, or theory of ignorance; and thirdly, the Ontology, or theory of being. The fundamental question is, 'What is the one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential in all the varieties of our knowledge?'
The first condition of knowledge is that we should know ourselves, and reason gives certainty to this proposition which is not capable of demonstration, owing to its being itself the starting-point; the counter-proposition, asserting the separate subject and object of knowledge, and the mutual presence of the two without intelligence's being necessarily cognisant of itself, represents general opinion, and the ordinary view of popular psychology. Knowledge, then, Ferrier goes on, always has the self as an essential part of it; it is knowledge-in-union-with-whatever-it-apprehends. The objective part of the object of knowledge, though distinguishable, is not really separable from the subjective or ego; both constitute the unit of knowledge—an utterance thoroughly Hegelian in its character, however Ferrier may disclaim a connection 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: one of these is incidental to some minds, but not to all—an ignorance of defect, he puts it—just as we might be said to be ignorant of a language we had never learned. But the other ignorance (not, properly speaking, ignorance at all) is incident to all intelligence by its very nature, and is no defect or imperfection. The law of ignorance hence is that 'we can be ignorant only of what can be known,' or 'the knowable is alone the ignorable.' The bearing of this important point is seen at once when we turn back to the theory of knowing. Knowledge is something of which the subject cannot shake himself free; 'I' must always, in whatever I apprehend, apprehend 'me.' We don't apprehend 'things,' that is, but what is apprehended is 'me-apprehending-things.' Things-plus-me is the only knowable, and consequently the only 'ignorable.'
This brings us a great way towards the Absolute Idealism associated mainly with the name of Hegel—towards the Knowledge or 'Experience' (a word which Ferrier afterwards himself makes use of) which shall cease to be a 'theory,' being recognised as comprehending within itself all Reality—as recognising no distinction between object and subject, excepting when they are regarded as two poles both equally essential, and separated only when looked at in abstraction. If Ferrier's '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 philosophy. If it is said to reduce all things to the phenomena of consciousness, it does the same to every nothing. What falls out of consciousness becomes incogitable; it lapses, not into nothing, but into what is contradictory. The material universe per se, and all its qualities per se, are not only absolutely unknowable, but absolutely unthinkable. We do indeed know substance, but only as object plus subject—as matter mecum or in cognition as thought together with the self.
It may be true that we cannot claim for Ferrier complete originality in his thinking; work on very similar lines was being carried on elsewhere. It is not difficult to trace throughout his writings the mode of his development. The earlier works are evidently influenced by Fichte and his school, since the personal ego and individual 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 or individual element is less conspicuous as the universal element is more, which signifies that gradually he approaches closer to the standpoint of the later German thinkers by a careful study of their works, though for the most part it is Reid and Hamilton his criticisms have in view, and not the corresponding work of Kant.
Still, we should say that Ferrier's attitude represented another phase in the same struggle against abstraction and towards unity in knowledge, rather than being a simple outcome of the German influence in Scotland. This last assumption he at least 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 difficulty in proving from itself its absolute inadequacy. He felt that in his doctrine of the reality of knowledge he had found the means of solving problems hitherto dark and obscure, and he used his instruments bravely, and on the whole successfully.
The faith-philosophy which professed to know reality through the senses, when these senses were a part of the external universe, or signified taking for granted the matter in dispute, was utterly repugnant to Ferrier. The Unknowable of Sir William Hamilton was inconceivable to him, and he ever kept this theory and its errors in his mind, while developing 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 influence is never really great; and the Idealism of Germany has in this country always suffered from being intelligible only to the few. Therefore we hold all credit due to Ferrier for consistently refusing to adopt the phraseology of a foreign country, and setting himself, heart and soul, to find expression for his thoughts in the language of his birth.
Ferrier introduces his Lectures on Greek Philosophy, the last subject on which he undertook to write, in a manner which reminds us of Hegel's remarkable Introduction to his History of Philosophy; he begins, like Hegel, by pointing out that the study of philosophy 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 record the existence of dead systems of thought that are past and gone, but the living products of his own, full of present, vital interest, and there is nothing arbitrary or capricious in such a history: all is reasoned thought as it manifests and reveals itself.
Philosophy, Ferrier defines, by calling it the pursuit of Truth—not relative Truth, but absolute, what necessarily exists for all minds alike; and man's faculties (contrary to what is generally supposed) are competent to attain to it, provided only 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 universal, a unity; that the very essence of religion, for example, rests on the unity which constitutes the bond between God and man, and that when this is denied, religion is made impossible. What then, we may ask, is the Truth that has to be pursued?
It is that which is the real, the object of philosophy—the real which exists for all intelligence. The historian of philosophy must show that philosophy in its history corresponds with this definition, if the definition be a true one.
The lectures begin with Thales and the followers of the Ionic school, and Ferrier points out how, in spite of the material elements which are taken as a basis, their systems are philosophic, in so far as they aim at the establishment of a universal in all things, and carry with them the belief that this universal is the ultimately real; and this gives them an interest which from their sensuous 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 contrary determinations in one subject is regarded as impossible. Apart, either side is incomprehensible, and hence Mr. Mansel and Sir William Hamilton argue the impotence of human reason; but if, as Ferrier believes, they are shown to be but moments or essential factors in conception, the antagonism will be proved unreal—it will be an antagonism proper to the very life and essence of reason.
Possibly in his account of the early Greek philosophers Ferrier may have done what many historians of philosophy have done before him, he may have read into the systems which he has been describing much more than he was entitled so to read. He may, when he is talking of the Eleatics of Heraclitus, and even of Socrates and Plato, have had before his mind the special battle which he had 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 which none excepting those weighed down with dread of examination questions, care to peruse? Thought reads itself from itself, and if it sometimes reads the present into the past, and thinks to see it there, is there matter for surprise, or is it so very far wrong? If it tells us something of the secrets it itself conceals, it is surely telling us after all much of those that are gone.
For Plato, Ferrier naturally had a very great affinity; he deals with him at length, and evidently had made a special and careful study of his writings. But the same method is applied by him to Plato as was before applied to the other Greek philosophers. 'It is not so much by reading Plato as by studying our own minds that we can find out what ideas are, and perceive the significance of the theory which expounds them. It is only by verifying in our own consciousness the discoveries of antecedent philosophers that we can hope rightly 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 attractively as to whet the curiosity and stimulate the ardour of those who have chosen him as a guide.' And it was as such that Ferrier marked him out and chose him as his own. With Aristotle he had probably less in common, and his treatment both of him and of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neo-Platonists, with which the history ends, is less sympathetic in its tone and understanding in its style. But these lectures as a whole, though never put together for printing as a book, must always be of interest to the student of philosophy.
A philosophic article, entitled Berkeley and Idealism, and published in June of 1842, was designed to meet the attack of Mr. Samuel Bailey, who had written a Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, criticising the soundness of his views. Mr. Bailey replied, and Ferrier a year later published an article on that reply. Ferrier rightly appreciates the very important place which ought to be allowed to Berkeley as a factor in the development of philosophic truth—a place which has only been properly understood in later years. He saw the part he had played in bringing the real significance of Absolute Idealism into view, and deprecated the representation of his system made by David 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 style and its logical development. Ferrier does not often touch directly on questions of religion or theology, but there is an interesting passage in this essay which shows his views regarding the question of immortality. He is talking of the impossibility of our ever conceiving to ourselves the idea of our annihilation. Such an idea could not be rationally articulated. We appear, indeed, to be able to realise it, but we only think we think it: real thought of death in this sense would involve our being already dead; but in thought we are and must be immortal. 'We have nothing to wait for; eternity is even now within us, and time, with all its vexing troubles, is no more.'
It was something absolute and enduring for which Ferrier was ever on the search. Those of his Introductory Lectures which are preserved bear out this statement, if nothing else were left to do so. Philosophy, thought, is more than systems: 'As long as man thinks, the light must burn.' Could he but teach the young men who gathered round him day by day to think, he cared 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 involves must not be overlooked. The practical rule of disciplining the mind should run side by side with the theoretical instruction, which might soon be forgotten; the great effort of a teacher should be in the best and highest sense to educate his students. That is, he has not only to instil their minds with multifarious learning, but to make their thinking systematic.
And philosophy must, he tells us, be made interesting if it is to be of any use: we must arrive at a 'philosophic consciousness,' and distinguish philosophy from mere opinion. It is mind which is the permanent and immutable in all change and mutation; even the Greeks found the idea of permanence in mind while they regarded change as the principle of matter.
Thus, when the end of the day had come, when the lamp grew dim, and the books he loved so much must be for the last time shut, Ferrier's teaching was not so very different from what it was nearly thirty years before. The only real change was that the impetuosity of youth had gone; the man and his system had both become matured: the one more tolerant, more careful in expression, more considerate of the feelings of his 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 losing the keen interest in work to be accomplished, must have taught a lesson more than systems of philosophy dream of. For they could not fail to learn that the eternal can be found in history—even in history of long centuries ago, as in every other sphere of knowledge—and that the search for it supports the seeker in his daily life, takes all its bitterness from what is hardest, from pain, suffering, and even death.