Robert Ferguson

“ And though philosophy may elevate the instinct of devotion to the contemplation of a Being which reason can worship, yet mankind will bow down with fervor to the work of their own hands, to stocks and stones, rather than remain without a God. Among the followers of Schelling [7] there are, and there must be, some who have a holy yearning towards the infinite, who live in the consciousness that all around them is alive, and die with the hope of being resolved into that power, which is all in all, the beauty and might of nature, and the majesty of man. ”

“ In a mathematical demonstration, for example, we are not the authors of our conviction. No act of ours makes it more or less true. Neither is the conviction of the truth confinable to us; for we feel that at all times, in all places, and to all men, the proposition must be true; that is, it is absolutely true; true of an absolute truth. The Reason is manifested in other sciences besides the mathematical. All science [6] is only science inasmuch as it contains necessary truths: we acknowledge these implicitly, and it is out of our power not to acknowledge them. ”

“ In the case of a descriptive name we may be sure that it has been given—not from any fine-drawn attribute, but from some obvious characteristic—not from anything which we have to seek, but from something which, as the French say, "saute aux yeux." If a stream be very rapid and impetuous—if its course be winding and tortuous—if its waters be very clear or very turbid—these are all marked features which would naturally give it a name. ”

“ All the names of Germany would tend to come to England, but if Anglo-Saxon England made any names on her own account, they would not go back to Germany. For the tide of men flows ever west-ward, and there was no return current in those days. ”

“ It is impossible for the mind to remain long in doubt, and where it cannot cling to truth it embraces error. Even in those cases in which scepticism has been indulged, the penalty has not been trifling, which attends a wilful separation from the feelings and thoughts common to our species. The picture which the calm and philosophic Hume has given us of the state of his own mind, is truly appalling. He describes himself as afraid to think; for he knows not to what conclusions he may arrive, and what barriers he may create between himself and the rest of mankind. ”

“ The names of rivers form a striking commentary on the history of language, so admirably expounded to the general reader in the recent work of Professor Max Müller.
When we review the long list of words that must have once had the meaning of water or river, we can hardly fail to be struck with the number that have succumbed in what he so aptly terms "the struggle for life which is carried on among synonymous words as much as among plants and animals." ”

“ Each man would no doubt have his own individual name, but as a community exercising certain rights in common, from which outsiders were excluded, they would require some distinctive appellation, and what so natural as that of their leader.
I now come to consider some points of difference between the Anglo-Saxon settlements and the German. While all the settlements in England must be taken to have been made by a Low German race, a large proportion of those in Germany must be taken to have been made by a High German people. ”

“ It was a law of the reason to strive after the greatest unity: man was constantly governed by a want of it. He unites all the phenomena of mind, and refers them to one substance called the soul. He unites all the phenomena of the sensible world, and calls them matter. After having constituted these two unities, he then elevates his mind to the highest unity, or the Eternal first Cause.
What then has Kant left us that we do know as real and out of the mind? All the phenomena of nature are modifications of mind, and all the laws which govern these phenomena but laws of the mind. ”

“ The first wave of Asian immigration that swept over Europe gave names to the great features of nature, such as the rivers, long before the wandering tribes that composed it settled down into fixed habitations, and gave names to their dwellings and their lands. The names thus given at the outset may be taken therefore to contain some of the most ancient forms of the Indo-European speech. And once given, they have in many, if not in most cases remained to the present day, for nothing affords such strong resistance to change as the name of a river. ”

“ It is in vain to seek for the origin of these necessary truths in sensation. We may torment that faculty as much as we please, but it will never give us any other knowledge but that derived from experience. And as no experience can be infinite, so from experience we can but arrive at general conclusions, and never at absolute certainty. Our notion of space, in which pure mathematics are founded, is not a matter of experience; for, no man, by any of his senses, can measure, or see, or feel any thing but a particular space, which would be limited, but never an infinite space. ”

“ I would not undertake to say that our name is not in any instance from this origin, but what I say is that a proved Anglo-Saxon name is better than any assumed word, however suitable its meaning may seem to be. Moreover, the same Anglo-Saxon word will account, not only for Gay, but for a whole group of names, Gay, Gye, Gedge, Gage, Kay, Key, Kegg, Kedge, Cage,—all variations, according to my view, of one original name. It must inevitably be the case that a name dating back to a remote antiquity, and in use over a wide area, must be subject to many phonetic variations. ”

“ The law of causality leads us to a first cause, and the law of substance to a real being. Thus reason reveals to us, as absolutely true, the existence of things, of which the senses cannot take any cognizance."
The laws of Reason are therefore absolute; they do not belong to me more than to you; they do not belong to humanity, but govern it, inasmuch as we are forced to acknowledge them, forced to be convinced, forced mentally to obey. They oblige the Will, but do not constrain it. Neither do they belong to external nature. The universe represents them ”

“ Nevertheless, I must say that it seems to me that to assume the compound to be older than the simple looks very much like something that is contrary to first principles, and indeed the very fact that simple names are so often used in place of compounds appears to me to show that they are more natural to men, and that men would generally adopt them if they could. ”

“ Again, when we call the Absolute the principle of all existence, we have the notion merely of a first cause. When, however, we call it the essence of things, and then prove from it that all things are but modes of this first cause, it is evident that we are begging the question. We first make the Absolute the essence of all things, and then prove that all things are but this essence. ”

“ Corruptions may be divided broadly into two kinds, those which proceed from a desire to improve the sound of a name, and those which proceed from a desire to make some kind of sense out of it. The former, which we may call phonetic, generally consists in the introduction of a letter, either to give more of what we may call "backbone" to a word, or else to make it run more smoothly. For the former purpose b or p is often used—thus we have, even in Anglo-Saxon times, trum made into trump, sem into semp, and emas into embas. ”

“ A man who can look on the wonderful instincts of Nature, and see the minutest and humblest of living atoms producing the greatest revolutions in the face of the globe, who can observe the nice balance established between the different grades of animated beings, and see how all is beautiful, and all is order,—a man, we say, that can see this, and see it as the result of an unconscious reason, will believe any thing. If this be Philosophy, this the boasted superiority of enlightened minds, we fervently hope that its light may never shine on us ”

“ We have seen in a preceding chapter that the earliest Saxon place-names in England are derived from a personal name, and that the idea contained is that of a modified form of common right. We shall find that a very large proportion of the later Anglo-Saxon place-names are also derived from the name of a man, but that the idea contained is now that of individual ownership or occupation. The extent to which English place-names are derived from ancient names of men is, in my judgment, very much greater than is generally supposed. ”

“ To such, it is in vain to say, that a power which is unconscious of its own existence until it knows itself in man, is not, and cannot be, an object of adoration to the conscious reason. We feel that our consciousness is a higher faculty than that unconscious power; which, after all, is a phantasy of the mind. There may, therefore, be much truth in the moral part of the philosophy of Schelling, or of M. Cousin, and little in the theoretical. No philosophy is entirely false; it is only from its containing some fragment of truth that it ever imposes upon man. ”

“ Kant's system leads to pure Idealism; this, we are aware, is not admitted by many of his followers, but it is nevertheless true. He denied that the mind was ever capable of knowing what things were in themselves. All that we imagine to be external and extended, is not really so; we make it so; for space is not a real existence, but a mode of the mind; a law, by which the mind perceives things extended, just as the eye perceives all things coloured red, if viewed through red glass. ”