Page:(1856, Jul) Letter from Professor Ferrier.pdf/6



, June 17, 1856.

,—I need scarcely say to you that, alike for your own sake and that of our Metropolitan University, it would give me profound satisfaction to see you elected to the Chair for which you are now a Candidate.

Among my philosophical friends I have found a difference of opinion as to some of the leading propositions in your "Institutes of Metaphysic;" but we are always at one as to the linked consecutiveness of your deductions, and that peculiar vividness of conception which enables you to present the most abstract propositions as clearly as if they were diagrams. Your method of arranging and presenting them is altogether original. I cannot refrain from adding an expression of my own special wonder at that consummate fulness, yet severe parsimony, of your manifold illustrations, which make them almost more than ancillary to the presentment of truth—something like a necessary part of that presentment itself. In no department of philosophy or literature have I met an economy of illustration so beautifully precise. At this, I however, I should express no