James Frederick Ferrier

CHAPTER X

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.

Those days are over, and with them has passed away much of what stimulated one to read in the Institutes or the Philosophical Remains. But for the historian of British philosophy Ferrier continues as a prominent figure. He it was who first did, what Stirling and Green did again at a stage later on--make a serious appeal to thoughtful people to follow no longer the shallow rivulets down which the teaching of the great German thinkers had trickled to them, but to seek the sources. If as a guide to those sources we do not look on him to-day as adequate, we are not the less under a deep obligation to him for having been the pioneer of later guides. What Ferrier wrote about forty years ago has now become readily accessible, and what has been got by going there is in process of rapid and complete assimilation. The opinions which were in 1856 regarded by the authorities of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches as disqualifying Ferrier for the opportunity of influencing the mind of the youth of Edinburgh, from the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in succession to Sir William Hamilton, are regarded by the present generation of Presbyterians as the main reliable bulwark against the attacks of unbelievers. If one may judge by the essays in the recent volume called Lux Mundi, the same phenomenon displays itself among the young High Church party in England. The Time-Spirit is fond of revenges.

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.

CHAPTER I. Early Life

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.

In Scotland, where, in spite of politics, traditions are honoured to a degree unknown to most other countries, family and family associations count for much; and in these James Ferrier was rich. His father was a Writer to the Signet, John Ferrier by name, whose sister was the famous Scottish novelist, Susan Ferrier, authoress of The Inheritance, Destiny, and Marriage. Susan Ferrier did for high life in Scotland what Gait achieved for the humbler ranks of society, and attained to considerable eminence in the line of fiction which she adopted. Her works are still largely read, have recently been republished, and in their day were greatly admired by no less an authority than Sir Walter Scott, himself a personal friend of the authoress. Ferrier's grandfather, James Ferrier, also a Writer to the Signet, was a man of great energy of character. He acted in a business capacity for many years both to the Duke of Argyle of the time and to various branches of the Clan Campbell: it was, indeed, through the influence of the Duke that he obtained the appointment which he held of Principal Clerk of Session. James Ferrier, like his daughter, was on terms of intimate friendship with Sir Walter Scott, with whom he likewise was a colleague in office. Scott alludes to him in his Journal as 'Uncle Adam,' the name of a character in Miss Ferrier's Inheritance, drawn, as she herself acknowledges, from her father. He died in 1829, at which time Scott writes of him: 'Honest old Mr. Ferrier is dead, at extreme old age. I confess I should not like to live so long. He was a man with strong passions and strong prejudices, but with generous and manly sentiments at the same time.' James Ferrier's wife, Miss Coutts, was remarkable for her beauty: a large family was born to her, the eldest son of whom was James Frederick Ferrier's father. Young Ferrier, the subject of this sketch, used frequently to dine with his grandfather at his house in Morningside, where Susan Ferrier acted in the capacity of hostess; and it is easy to imagine the bright talk which would take place on these occasions, and the impression which must have been made upon the lad, both then and after he attained to manhood; for Miss Ferrier survived until 1854. In later life, indeed, her wit was said to be somewhat caustic, and she was possibly dreaded by her younger friends and relatives as much as she was respected; but this, to do her justice, was partly owing to infirmities. She was at anyrate keenly interested in the fortunes of her nephew, to whom she was in the habit of alluding as 'the last of the metaphysicians'--scarcely, perhaps, a very happy title for one who was somewhat of an iconoclast, and began a new era rather than concluded an old.

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