CHAPTER VI
FERRIER'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY — PHILOSOPHICAL
WRITINGS
'If one were asked,' says Professor Fraser, 'for the English writings which are fitted in the most attractive way to absorb a reader of competent intelligence and imagination in the final or metaphysical question concerning the Being in which we and the world of sensible things participate, Berkeley's Dialogues, Hume's Inquiry into Human Understanding, and some of the lately published Philosophical Remains of Professor Ferrier are probably those which would best deserve to be mentioned.'
It has been given to few philosophers of modern days to write on philosophic questions in a manner at once so lucid and so convincing as that of Ferrier. Nor can it in his case be said that matter is sacrificed to form, for the writer does not hesitate to 'nail his colours to the mast,' as he himself expresses it, and to tackle questions the most vital in their character in a straightforward and uncompromising fashion. His earliest published writings, as we have seen, took the form of a series of seven articles, which appeared, roughly speaking, in alternate months, between February of 1838 and March of 1839. These articles, entitled An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness, represented the results of their author's
