James Frederick Ferrier

“ It is to be feared that the temper of the times is unduly bent on magnifying into exaggerated proportions, the importance of the physical sciences, of causing them to supersede a discipline more essential to the cultivation both of the heart and of the head, and to usurp the place of a more genial and ennobling heritage. It is well, therefore, that we should be taught both theoretically and practically, to know that an acquaintance was something more than physical truth is required to make an nation great and her children wise. ”

“ But it is equally true, that every professional occupation, from the highest to the lowest, requires to be counterpoised and alleviated by pursuits of a more liberal order than itself. Without these the best faculties of our souls must sink down into ignoble torpor, and human intercourse be shorn of its highest enjoyments and its brightest blessings. The dedication of the mind—to the largest extent which the circumstances of the case permit—to the service of general literature, is a duty which every man of business owes both to himself and to society ”

“ It is founded on the truth, now so generally recognized, that education is continually progressive—progressive not only in the race, but in the individual—that is not finished at school, that it is not finished at college—that, by a very law of nature, every period of human life craves enlightenment, and that, amid the engrossing pursuits of his professional life, if a man cannot be happy unless he has the liberty and the opportunity for of cultivating those more liberal and enlightened tastes, which find their gratification only in the subjects of universal interest to mankind. ”

“ Finer influences, and in more genial training than mechanical sciences can supply, are required to nourish and support the moral characters of men—to eliminate their intelligence is—to refine their imaginations—and to mold our hearts to the standard of heroic virtue. Let me not be misunderstood. I speak in no disparagement of the natural sciences: as branches of a liberal education there worthy of all high honour and of all encouragement. ”

“ The great men who have been instrumental in carrying forward the progress of physical research and of mechanical power are entitled to a proud position among the benefactors of mankind. And have not they or their inventions received the reward to which they have so just that claim? Has not the plough, humble implement though it be, been lifted up by reverential hands from earth to heaven and enrolled, by the gratitude of mankind, among the constellations of the sky? ”

“ They are, indeed, in themselves connected by close and fine affinities; for if it be true that literature (and I use that word in its most comprehensive sense, as the aggregate of all the emanations of intellect, of all the researches of science) , if it is true that literature by supplying man's spiritual wants, is the power which ministers to the loftiest and purest enjoyments of the soul, it is equally true that industry, by providing for man's physical wants, is the power which first enables literature, with disencumbered wings, to pursue a free flight and put forth all her energies. ”

“ In speaking in these terms, I am not forgetful of those primitive periods of our history which our poets have celebrated as the golden age, when poverty was synonymous with integrity—when to live in a hollow tree was evidence of a contented mind, and to feed on acorns and other spontaneous products of the earth was to be innocent and pure. But however pleasing these pictures of man's early condition may be to the imagination, they labour under one great defect—they are not true. ”

“ I allude to the conviction—a conviction which is at every day gaining more and more strength—that a man's education, let it be carried to whatever degree of advancements it may, is a process which never is, and never can be completed. It was formerly thought that when a youth was emancipated from the restraints of school and college, his education was finished—that the discipline of the mind was a thing which naturally came to a stand-still when people had reached a particular period of their lives. ”

“ To supply such alleviations—to afford to our citizens who are engaged in the employment of active life an opportunity of keeping up, or of renewing their acquaintance with those great branches of knowledge which form the staple of a liberal education—is the object which this Institution has especially at heart. Its aim is to lift you, at times, above the distractions of your worldly cares, and the pursuit of your professional interests, by spreading before you man's fairer heritage of wisdom and of truth ”

“ They steadied the steps of advancing civilization, and helped to extend its blessings to all classes of this community. Nurseries of free and industrious men who prosecuted useful callings, the towns of modern Europe were the cradle of our civil liberty, and gradually diffusing this blessing beyond themselves, they were of the utmost service in lightening or in breaking the bondage of the feudal vassals, and in repressing the independence of the great barons, whose turbulence threatened to perpetuate the evils of anarchy or despotism. ”

“ A new kind of prosperity demanded new laws and better organised courts of justice; and thus, it may be said, that the civil liberty, the political privileges, the national wealth, the ameliorated laws of modern Europe have all, in a great measure, proceeded out of commercial enterprise. Another confirmation of the truth, that industry is the mainspring of civilization, and has been in modern times, and during the period of the middle ages—for it was then that this new spirit announced itself—the grand regenerator of society. ”

“ It is now very generally felt and understood that although there may be periods of life better suited than others for the reception of knowledge, there is no season of our earthly sojourn which is shut out from the benefit of her vivifying influences; that if youth be the proper time for kindling the lamp of truth, still the sacred flame demands a sustaining fuel during all the years of our mortal pilgrimage, and that our middle ages and our declining days require to be supported and cleared by the acquisition of new intellectual resources. ”

“ Greece with her imaginative mythology, her poetry, her history, and her philosophy, has already passed in review before your eyes—her radiant shrines, garlanded and with flowers by the hands of the officiating graces, at a time when our northern altars were from reeking with human blood. ”

“ These nations excelled in all kinds a mechanical skill; if they could boast of no crystal palaces, the grandeur of their solid architecture was unsurpassed, and that produce of their looms dazzle the eye, as if it were woven out of sunbeam's; that day, with all their gorgeous workshops, have passed away, and have left behind them no shining traces of renown: because the greatness of a people when living, and their glory when dead, depend on causes which these nations did not sufficiently respect. ”

“ Listening within these walls to the history of the early Asiatic nations, you shall superintend with the intrepid Layard, the explorations of the old cities of Assyria, and be present, as it were, at the disinterment of mysterious relics, long submerged under the devouring sands, but now laid open to the light, and compelled to render up their meaning; and thus showing that, just as men, by the aid of the telescope, can subdue the territories of immeasurable space, so can he, by the resources of the skill, triumph over the spoliations of all-consuming time. ”

“ Professor Ferrier said—The two principal agents in the work of human civilisation are the power of industry and the power of literature. These agencies have been too often divorced and held asunder from each other. Too often has the man of industry forsworn the companionship of letters, and too often has the man of letters withheld his sympathies from the avocations of industry. ”

“ The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. ”

“ The obligations which literature owes to industry are greater than perhaps most people are aware of. It is only after man's physical necessities have been adequately relieved, that the loftier cravings of his nature can come into existence; and it is only after these higher aspirations have declared themselves that science and literature obtain a footing in the world. ”

“ Since the fall of our first father, there is no authentic record of any people or of any tribe occupying at once a position of the high moral culture and of low physical refinement: on the contrary, wherever poverty has most abounded, wherever man has been worst supplied with the good things of this life, there has he ever been most a prey to his own sanguinary and brutalizing passions. ”

“ To meet that natural demand, to satisfy those intellectual affections and aspirations of the people, this institution has arisen; and it has endeavored to fulfill its location in a spirit commensurate with those wants on the part of the public, to which it owes its existence and its prosperity. ”

“ Indeed it stands to reason that mankind can make no progress in the arts of civilisation, but must remain unsusceptible of moral culture, so long as they are weighed down to the earth by the anxieties inseparable from a condition in which the very humblest means of subsistence are scanty, precarious, and hard-wrung. ”

“ We should form a mistaken estimate of the purposes of this institution if we were to suppose that its only, or even that its main object, was to furnish the means of instruction to those who, by the accidents of their position have lacked, or have enjoyed but to a limited extent, the advantages of the scholastic or academical training. That, no doubt, is one of the beneficial aims which this society endeavors to overtake. ”

“ The aim of this system is to secure every state in the full possession and enjoyment of its rights, by making its safety and independence objects of interest and guardianship, not only to itself, but to all its neighbors. According to this system, if any one nation, actuated by ambitious views or aiming at undue aggrandisement, threatens the independence of any other, it is the duty even of those states which are not immediately menaced to take up arms against the aggressor, and to defend the weak against the strong. ”

“ And this is undoubtedly the right course to pursue: because it eminently distinguished as the present age as it is by the splendor and variety of its scientific discoveries, by the usefulness of its mechanical contrivances, and by the beauty of its industrial productions, it is all the more necessary, on that very account, that we should continually bear in mind that it is not by the sciences alone, whether abstract or applied, that the growth of man's moral nature is effectually promoted. ”

“ What moral and intellectual advancement can be expected from a man whose every hour is filled up with solicitude in regard to the alleviation of his lowest bodily wants, and whose condition forbids that he should exercise his ingenuity in any other way than in contriving expedients—expedients clumsy, and often unsuccessful—by which the ever-returning pangs of hunger may be appeased? ”

“ The mechanical arts are worthy of all admiration, and our comfort tells us that their cultivation cannot be dispensed with; but history and reason alike assure us that these are not the main causes which give vigor to the heart of the people, and render their memory immortal. ”

“ In Roman history you shall study, on the noblest scale, the moral osteology, if I may so speak, of colossal characters, and may learn to know, from the bones and sinews of her old dictators, what the true foundations of genuine manhood are. ”

“ To prevent that consummation, as far as human means can prevent it, —to avert the possibility of that catastrophe—the system called the balance of power exists; and on the basis of this system the foreign policy of all nations, in so far as they pursue a righteous and enlightened course of policy, is now-a-days administered. ”

“ In conclusion, let me remark that the benefits to the community which this Institution is calculated to produce cannot be over-estimated. Labour is the lot of man. Almost every one of us is under the necessity of pursuing some practical avocation, by which his daily bread has to be won ”

“ It is against the study of these sciences, to the exclusion—and this I fear, in the extreme into which the present times are running—the exclusion of these pursuits of so useful and improving a character, and which, as a discipline of the mind, are even, in my humble opinion at least, entitled to take rank before the natural sciences—it is against this partial or one sided system that I protest ”