James Frederick Ferrier

“ Looking at poetry, then, in its abstract and absolute character, looking at what we may call the spirit of poetry as it exists, not incarnated in this or that particular composition, but as a genial power which enlightens the intellect and the heart both of the poet himself and of those who listen to his strains; looking at poetry under this point of view, I ask, putting the question in the form of a bold, brief, and strong antithesis, Does man make poetry, or does poetry make man? Is the human mind the original source to which poetry may be traced as to its fountainhead? ”

“ What is there in the workings of human passion that consciousness should necessarily accompany it, any more than it does the tossings of the stormy sea? What is there in the radiant emotions which issue forth in song, that consciousness should naturally and necessarily accompany them, any more than it does the warblings and the dazzling verdure of the sun-lit woods? What is there in the exercise of reason, that consciousness should inevitably go along with it, any more than it accompanies the mechanic skill with which the spider spreads his claggy snares? ”

“ I conceive that this philosophy of Parmenides corresponds, if not adequately, at any rate largely, with our definition. Being is not the truth of the universe for our minds, or for any minds in particular; but it is the truth of the universe for all minds. Being is a necessary conception, a conception valid for all reason. An intelligence which had no conception of Being could not be an intelligence at all. Attempt to explain to an intelligence with no such senses as ours—attempt to explain to him the sensible universe, the universe as it appears to the senses, and he would not understand you. ”

“ Let us, then, look abroad into the universe once more, and there, throughout "all that it inherit," mark, if we can, the absence of some fact which is to be found conspicuously present in man.
Continuing, then, our survey of the universe, we behold works of all kinds, and of surpassing beauty, carried on. Mighty machinery is everywhere at work; and on all sides we witness marvellous manifestations of life, of power, and of reason. The sun performs his revolution in the sky, and keeps his appointed pathway with unwearied and unerring foot, while the seasons depend upon his shining. ”

“ My philosophy is Scottish to the very core; it is national in every fibre and articulation of its frame. It is a natural growth of old Scotland's soil, and has drunk in no nourishment from any other land. Are we to judge of the productions of Scotland by looking merely to what Scotland has hitherto produced? May a philosopher not be, heart and soul, a Scotsman—may he not be a Scotsman in all his intellectual movements, even although he should have the misfortune to differ, in certain respects, from Dr Reid and Sir William Hamilton? ”

“ If we admit the logic we must admit the creed, and if we admit the creed we must admit the logic; but let us tear both of them in pieces, and scatter their fragments to the winds. The creed of nature concludes simply for enjoyment; but the truer creed of human life, a creed which says little about happiness, was uttered soon after the foundations of the world were laid, and has been proved and perpetuated by the experience of six thousand years. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou cultivate the earth;" and, it may be added, in a bitterer sweat shalt thou till, oh man! ”

“ Does the human mind fabricate for itself the idea of the beautiful and the idea of the sublime? or do not rather these ideas fashion and fabricate the human mind? Does man derive his poetical inspiration from himself? or does he derive himself as a poet from the everlasting poetry of Him who has sown the sky with stars and the earth with flowers, who is Himself the substance of the true, the beautiful, and the good? ”

“ How fond most of the contributors to science are of taking this view of their own labours! Modest people! As if any one would thank a mason who should say to him—"There, sir, are the stones; you can now build your house for yourself!" It must embrace every essential part of philosophy, thoroughly digested, and strictly reasoned out as a harmonious and consistent whole. It must show the exact point where every opinion and every controversy in philosophy takes off from the tap-root or main trunk of the great tree of speculation. ”

“ But still, with all this, it is what may be termed but a one-sided universe; under one view it is filled to the brim with life and light. Under another view it is lying within the very blackest shadow of darkness and of death. The first view is a true one, because all the creatures it contains are, indeed, alive, and, revelling in existence, put forth the most wonderful manifestations of reason. ”

“ And, finally, let us ask again, what is this act of antagonism against the natural states of humanity? what is this act in which we sacrifice our sensations, passions, and desires, that is, our false selves, upon the shrine of our true selves? what is this act in which Freedom and Will are embodied to defeat all the enslaving powers of darkness that are incessantly beleaguering us? what is it but morality of the highest, noblest, and most active kind? and, therefore, what is human philosophy, ultimately, but another name for human virtue of the most practical and exalted character? ”

“ But, dead to the sense of these inspired words, we make no effort to shake off the drowsing influence, or to rescue our souls from the acquiescent torpor, which they denounce—no struggle to behold that which we lose sight off, only because we behold it too much, or to penetrate the heart of a secret which escapes us only by being too glaringly revealed. Instead of striving, as we ought, to render ourselves strange to the familiar, we strive, on the contrary, to render ourselves familiar with the strange. ”

“ All the germs that nature has planted in his breast owe their growth to her breath, and, unfolding themselves beneath it, they flourish in blessedness—for a time.
Hence this view of human life being the first to present itself to observation, the genius of physical science has ever been foremost to attempt to fix the position of man in the scale of the universe, and to read to him his doom. She tells thee, O man, that thou art but an animal of a higher and more intelligent class—a mere link, though perhaps a bright one, in the uninterrupted chain of creation. ”

“ It is now time that we should begin to dig upwards, and escape out of these mines of humanity, in which we have been working hard, although, we know, with most imperfect hands. We have trod, we trust with no unhallowed step, but with a foot venturous after truth, on the confines of those dread abysses which, in all ages, have shaken beneath the feet of the greatest thinkers among men. We have seen and handled the dark ore of humanity in its pure and elemental state. ”

“ Oh, ye miserable mystics! when will ye know that all God's truths and all man's blessings lie in the broad health, in the trodden ways, and in the laughing sunshine of the universe, and that all intellect, all genius, is merely the power of seeing wonders in common things! ”

“ Then what was the whole of the enlightened jurisprudence, and all the high philosophy of antiquity, but so many indications of consciousness in its practical antagonism against human depravity? What is justice, that source and concentration of all law? Is it a natural growth or endowment of humanity? Has it, in its first origin, a positive character of its own? No; there is no such thing as natural or born justice among men. Justice is nothing but the consciousness of our own natural injustice, this consciousness being, in its very essence, an act of resistance against the same. ”

“ We are in everything at the mercy of a foreign causality, and how can we resist its sway? We are drifting before the breath of nature, and can the wave turn against the gale that is impelling it, and refuse to flow? Drift on, then, thou epicurean, thou child of nature, passive in thy theory and thy practice, and sheathed in what appears to be an irrefragable logic, and see where thy creed will land thee!
But perhaps man has been armed by nature with weapons wherewith to fight against the natural powers that are seeking to enslave him. ”

“ The philosophy of Parmenides, meagre as its principle, and unsatisfactory as its issues may seem, is a genuine product of the speculative spirit of the world straining towards the light. It is a true philosophy; it has its roots in the necessities of thought. It goes forth in pursuit of the universal, the truth for all intellect. It finds this in the conception of Being; but it mistakes a half conception for a whole one, so that, instead of establishing a whole, it only establishes the half of a necessary thought: in other words, it issues in a contradiction. ”

“ But it has been asked again and again, in reference to these two solulutions, can a man overstep the limits of himself—of his own consciousness? If he can, then says the querist, the reality of the external world is indeed guaranteed; but what an insoluble, inextricable contradiction is here: that a man should overstep the limits of the very nature which is his, just because he cannot overstep it! And if he cannot, then says the same querist, then is the external universe an empty name—a mere unmeaning sound; and our most inveterate convictions are all dissipated like dreams. ”

“ Even as it is, nothing can be more wonderful than that he should evolve this antagonist power in the very heart of the floods of sensation which, pouring in upon all sides, are incessantly striving to overwhelm it; and secure in its strength, should ride, as in a lifeboat, amid all the whirlpools of blind and fatalistic passion, which make the life of every man here below a sea of roaring troubles. ”

“ If time, in a thousand years, tells perceptibly upon the granite boulder, we may be assured that at every instant it is telling upon it. Every particle of it is continually undergoing some minute change, some change so minute that it vanishes in the very act of being born, and seems to be no change at all. And the whole universe, I am inclined to think, is in this fluxional, this at once existent and non-existent predicament. Such, at least, is the doctrine of Heraclitus. Change is his universal. This conception is, according to him, a necessity of reason, a truth ”

“ But the man himself is not to be found in this "calculating machine." He, with all his true phenomena, has burst alive from under her petrific hand, and leaves her grasping "airy nothings," not even the shadow of that which she is striving to comprehend; for, though she can soar the solar height, and gaze unblinded on the stars, man soars higher still, and, in his lofty region, she has got waxen wings, that fall to pieces in the blaze of the brighter sun of human freedom. ”

“ The very conception of reducing the diversified exuberance, the infinite plenitude, of nature to the unity of one principle, showed a speculative boldness which proved that a new intellectual era was dawning on mankind. To perceive that truth was to be found in the one, and not in the many, was no insignificant discovery. To be convinced that a thread of simplicity ran through all the complex phenomena of the universe was the inauguration of a new epoch—was a great step taken in advance of all that had gone before—was, in fact, the very first movement which gave birth to science among men. ”

“ Thus, then, we see that philosophy, when she gets her due—when she deals fairly with man, and when man deals fairly by her—in short, when she is rightly represented and understood, loses her merely theoretical complexion, and becomes identified with all the best practical interests of our living selves. She no longer stands aloof from humanity, but, descending into this world's arena, she takes an active part in the ongoings of busy life. Her dead symbols burst forth into living realities; the dry rustling twigs of science become clothed with all the verdure of the spring. ”

“ And truly this fact is well worthy of our regard, and one which will worthily reward our pains. It is a fact of most surpassing wonder; a fact prolific in sublime results. Standing aloof as much as possible from our acquired and inveterate habits of thought; divesting ourselves as much as possible of our natural prepossessions, and of that familiarity which has blunted the edge of astonishment, let us consider what we know to be the fact; namely, that existence, combined with intelligence and passion in many instances, but unaccompanied by any other fact, is the general rule of creation. ”

“ For common sense, being instinctive or nearly so, rarely errs; and its expressions, not being matured by reflection, generally contain within them, though under very obscure forms, much of the deep truth and wisdom of revelations. What though its facts and its language may often be to us, like the mirage to travellers in the desert, for a time an illusive and disappointing thing? Still let us persevere in the pursuit. The natural mirage is often the most benign provision which Heaven, in its mercy, could call up before the eyes of the wanderers through barren wastes. ”

“ In many little characteristic touches of humour, frankness, beneficence, beautiful gratitude for any slight help or attention, his truest and best nature seemed to come out all the more freely; he grew, as it were, more and more entirely himself indeed. If ever a man was true to philosophy, or a man's philosophy true to him, it was so with Terrier during all the time when he looked death in the face and possessed his soul in patience. ”

“ Long as the sun shone, their love basked beautiful beneath it, and wore smiles of eternal constancy; but when the storm arose, then Hatred, which had been overlooked by Consciousness, arose also, and the place of Love knew it no more. Justice worked well so long as every one got what he himself wanted. But no sooner were the desires of any man thwarted, than Injustice, which Consciousness had laid no restraint upon, stretched out her hand and snatched the gratification of them ”

“ What but the struggle between consciousness and cowardice?—a struggle by and through which the latter was dragged into light and vanquished—and then the hero went forth into the thickest ranks of danger, strong in the consciousness of his own weakness, and as if out of very spite of the natural coward that wished to hold him back, and who rode shaking in his saddle as he drove into the hottest of the fight. Natural courage, depending upon temperament, will quail at times, and prove faithless to its trust; the strongest nerves will often shake, in the hour of danger, like an aspen in the gale ”

“ These passions, like our sensations, monopolise the man, and cannot endure that anything should infringe their dominion. So far from helping to realise our personality, they do everything in their power to keep it aloof or in abeyance, and to lull man into oblivion—of himself. So far from coming into life, our personality tends to disappear, and, like water torn and beaten into invisible mist by the force of a whirlwind, it often entirely vanishes beneath the tread of the passions. Then comes reason; and perhaps you imagine that reason elevates us to the rank of personal beings. ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty, that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ Active processes are everywhere going on; and throughout the length and breadth of creation there is a constant succession of changes. The whole earth is, indeed, teeming with every form and every colour of existence; and that enjoyment is there too, who can doubt when spring is in the air, and the lark singing in the cloud?
Here, then, we have a creation brimful of activity and life, and no pause in all its vigorous and multifarious ongoings. What is there, then, in man which is not to be found here also, and even in greater and more perfect abundance? Is it intelligence? Is it reason? ”

“ Nature works beautifully, but blindly and without reflection. Thou must work, it may be with pain and difficulty, but, at the same time, with a seeing soul, and a full consciousness of what thou art about. Nature fills thy heart with passions, and tells it to find its happiness in giving way to them. But, out of consciousness, conscience has germinated ”