James Frederick Ferrier

“ 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. ”

“ If idealism be a system which holds that matter per se is nothing, we forswear and denounce idealism. True idealism, however, never maintained any such absurd thesis. But does not true idealism reduce every thing in the universe to a mere phenomenon of consciousness? Suppose it does,—does it not also reduce every nothing in the universe to a mere phenomenon of consciousness? The materialist supposes that, according to idealism, when a loaf of bread ceases to be a phenomenon of consciousness, and is locked away in a dark closet, it must turn into nothing. ”

“ Many men can do good and able work in the world, but there are only a few anywhere, in any institution, who invest their work with that nameless personal influence which captivates while it instructs the young, which quickens their intellectual enthusiasm and expands and refines their feelings in the process of education. No one was ever more gifted with this rare endowment than Professor Ferrier. There was a buoyant and graceful charm in all he did, a perfect sympathy, cordiality, and frankness, which won the hearts of his students, as of all who sought his intellectual companionship. ”

“ 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 ”

“ No man saw the seed planted—no eye noticed the infant sprouts—no mortal hand watered the nursling of the grove—no register was kept of the gradual widening of its girth, or of the growing circumference of its shade—till, the deciduous dialects of surrounding barbarians dying out, the unexpected bole stands forth in all its magnitude, carrying aloft in its foliage the poetry, the history, and the philosophy of a heroic people, and dropping for ever over the whole civilized world the fruits of Grecian literature and art. ”

“ The semblance of justice, he says, without the reality, is no more a good thing for its possessor than the semblance of order is a good thing in a nation, when all its ranks are in a condition of anarchy and rebellion, or than the appearance of health is a good thing in the human body, when all its organs are really in a state of disease. It is principally for the purpose of showing that virtue must be a reality, and not a sham, that Plato, in his Republic, has drawn a parallel between the soul of man and the political constitution of a 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! ”

“ We ask, then, what is dialectic the science of? The answer is, that it is the science of ideas. Ideas, as all the world knows, play a most important part in the philosophy of Plato. He was indeed the first philosopher who treated expressly of these mysterious entities, endeavouring to explain their nature, to establish them as the true constituents of the universe, and to displace by their means the sensible phenomena from the hold which they have on the opinions of mankind generally as the only realities which exist. Ideas are the Alpha and Omega in the philosophy of Plato. ”

“ The world of speculation, like the physical globe, is rounded to a sphere, but a sphere of more gigantic compass and more difficult circumnavigation than any which the whole natural universe can show. The primitive articles of all thought, the seminal principles of all reason, the necessary constituents of all knowledge, the keys of all truth, lie, at first, buried under our very feet; but, as yet, we are not privileged to find them. We must first circumnavigate the globe; the whole world of speculation must be traversed by our weary feet. ”

“ But whether philosophy be right or wrong, the student now understands distinctly the ground on which philosophy proceeds in holding as of little or no account the knowledge which comes to man through the senses. He sees that the reason why philosophy undervalues sensible knowledge is, that such knowledge is the truth only for some, but not for all intelligence. And he sees, further, that philosophy, if she is to be true to the terms of her own definition, not only may, but must, affix a brand on all sensible knowledge, stamping it as comparatively invalid and irrelevant. ”

“ There was nothing, I am sure, more valuable in his teaching than this, nothing for which his students will longer remember it with gratitude. No man could be more free from the small vanity of making disciples. He loved speculation too dearly for itself, he prized too highly the sacred rights of reason, to wish any man or any student merely to adopt his system or repeat his thought. Not to manufacture thought for others, but to excite thought in others, to stimulate the powers of inquiry, and brace all the higher functions of the intellect, was his great aim. ”

“ Probity might be said to consist not in being, but in seeming to be honest. The appearance was quite as good as the reality. By all means, said the sophists, be just and virtuous, if justice and virtue make you happy; but if vice and injustice make another man happy, why should not he too follow the bent of his inclinations? In doing so, he will obey the dictates of his nature, will fulfil the law of his being, just as much as you who pursue a contrary course are obeying the dictates and fulfilling the law of your being. ”

“ His pliant genius sits close to universal reality, like the sea which fits in to all the sinuosities of the land. Not a shore of thought was left untouched by his murmuring lip. Over deep and over shallow he rolls on, broad, urbane, and unconcerned. To this day, all philosophic truth is Plato rightly divined; all philosophic error is Plato misunderstood. Out of this question respecting the particular and the universal, as moved by him, came the whole philosophy of the Alexandrian absolutists, the whole contentions of the medieval schoolmen. ”

“ It arose out of the ambiguity in which Socrates had left the conception of the good, meaning by that word the great and proper object of all human pursuit. Is happiness the chief end of man? Is this the object which he is designed unremittingly to pursue on his own account, and to the utmost of his ability to diffuse on account of others? Or is virtue his chief end? Is the right as distinct from the useful, the just as distinct from the expedient, the object which it is his duty to strive after? Socrates does not seem to have returned any very explicit answer to this question ”

“ Even admitting that human reason is perplexed between these contradictories, does it necessarily follow, does it follow as a fair inference from that admission, that there are no truths which can be predicted of reason universally, that there are no laws which are valid for all intellect, without considering whether it is this, or that, or the other intellect ? Can we not admit that man's reason is imperfect, and, in reference to some questions, impotent, and yet stop short of the conclusion that in no respect whatever is it akin to a higher order of intelligence, supposing such to exist? ”

“ Aristotle lays down the general principle of the Pythagoreans in the following terms: "Number," he says, "is, according to them, the essence of all things; and the organisation of the universe, in its various determinations, is a harmonious system of numbers and their relations.” "The boldness of such an assertion," says Hegel, "impresses us as very remarkable; it is an assertion which strikes down at one blow all that our ordinary representations declare to be essential and true. It displaces sensible existence, and makes thought and not sense to be the criterion of the essence of things. ”

“ Hence our better genius is overpowered; and we are given over to a delirium, which we mistake for wisdom. Hence we are the slaves of mechanism, the inheritors and transmitters of privileged error; the bondsmen of convention, and not the free and deep-seeing children of reason. Hence we remain insensible to the true grandeurs and the sublimer wonders of Providence; for, is it to be conceived that the operations of God, and the order of the universe, are not admirable, precisely in proportion as they are ordinary; that they are not glorious, precisely in proportion as they are manifest ”

“ Nominalism stands victorious; but nominalism, too, is doomed very speedily to fall. The character of nominalism is this: it holds that all existences are particular; and that all cognitions are particular at first, and that they remain for ever particular. There are no such entities, either real or ideal, either in the mind or out of it, as general conceptions: but what is taken for such is always some mere particular cognition, which, by a determination of thought, is allowed to stand as representative of all cognitions and presentations which may resemble it. ”

“ It is not necessary, at present at least, to suppose that there are more intelligences than ours in the universe; but if there are other intelligences, it is necessary to suppose that they agree in some respect with ours, or, in other words, that all intelligences, actual or possible, have something in common. Now, the question here arises, What is this universal principle, this faculty which is common to all minds, in virtue of which we are able to apprehend the truth, not merely as it exists for us, but as it exists for all? ”

“ I am convinced that the unity of contraries is the law of all things; that all life, all nature, all thought, all reason, centres in the oneness or conciliation of Being and not-Being. A firm grasp of this doctrine, a clear insight into its truth, and a vigorous enforcement of it and of its consequences, would lead to the construction of a truer philosophy than that which is at present so much in vogue. That philosophy is founded entirely on the denial of the unity of contrary determinations in the same subject. ”

“ The inquiry should be gone into as if it were merely the smelting process, by which the most secret and essential laws of cognition and of thought are to be extricated from the dross of ordinary opinion, and submitted to the attention of mankind. Viewed in this light, the importance of the discussion cannot be too highly estimated. The agitation of no other question can make known to us the fundamental laws of all knowledge—the binding necessities of all reason. ”

“ Then, again, when pain or misfortune overtook a man, not through his own misdeeds, but through the inscrutable decrees of Providence, such pain was not to be regarded by the wise man as evil, for to him there is no evil except vice, no good except virtue. And it is obvious that such pain or calamity is not in itself moral evil; it is not wickedness, it is only distress, distress either of body or of mind, and by the endurance and resignation which it calls forth it may be the means of eliciting the loftiest virtues of the soul. ”

“ This is the extreme into which Epicurism has run in many a profligate period of the world's history. Here, too, Epicurism has run into excess, because it has made what it regards as the essential to be all in all, and has allowed no influence whatever to what it regards as the accidental. As in extreme Stoicism the limit absorbs and annihilates the passion, so in extreme Epicurism the passion swallows up and destroys the limit. The restraints are extinguished, and the passions are set up to rule and to reign alone. ”

“ Stated again, very shortly and simply, the reason why we should sacrifice our happiness to our virtue is this, that in sacrificing happiness to virtue we do not cease to be men, we only cease to be happy men; but in sacrificing virtue to happiness, we do cease to be men, because virtue is the preservation and perfecting of our rational nature, and therefore whatever is at variance with virtue is at variance with the preservation of our true being, and is pro tanto a curtailment or destruction of our moral and intelligent life. ”

“ Thought is itself, as we have seen, a disengagement from these, not that man in thinking is ever without sensation of one kind or another; but man in thinking is always free from their dominion. Self-preservation is the first of duties; but the preservation of our thinking, that is of our true, selves, can be effected only by laying a restraint on our sensations, appetites and desires, and by refusing to be their slaves. Thus alone is that self preserved which consciousness or conception reveals to us as our true self. ”

“ Error seems to be as tenacious of existence as truth. No sooner is it demolished under one form than it comes to life again under another. It steals, serpent-like, through the world, and, even when convicted, it usually escapes with the loss of little more than the mere skin upon its back. ”

“ If conceptualism is wrong in holding that any general conception by itself can be an object of the mind, nominalism is equally wrong in holding that any particular cognition by itself can be an object of the mind. Whether anything that exists is merely particular, we do not at present inquire; but it is certain that nothing which is known is merely particular, because all knowledge, as has been proved by this sixth proposition, is of necessity a synthesis of the particular and the universal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Being the common quality of all knowledge, it admits of no variation; being the same in all, it can have no substitute; being uniform, it has no phases. It can never be other than it is. If it could, it would no longer be the common quality. Our cognitions would lose their unity. They would cease to be cognitions, just as they would cease to be cognition by the suppression of the peculiar element which imparts to them their diversity. ”

“ The whole philosophical literature of the world is more like an unwieldy commentary on some text which has perished, or rather has never existed, than like what a philosophy itself should be. Our philosophical treatises are no more philosophy than Eustathius is Homer, or than Malone is Shakespeare. They are mere partial and desultory annotations on some text, on which, unfortunately, no man can lay his hands, because it nowhere exists. Hence the embroilment of speculation; hence the dissatisfaction, even the despair, of every inquiring mind which turns its attention to metaphysics. ”

“ How far does the philosophy which sets up Being as the universal principle, how far does it tally with our definition of Philosophy; the definition which declares that philosophy is the pursuit and attainment of truth as it is for all, and not merely as it is for some intelligence? ”