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Rh of his uncle, Professor Wilson, he became candidate for the professorship of Moral Philosophy, and in 1856 he sought to succeed to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics vacated by the death of Sir William Hamilton. On both occasions the voice of the electors determined otherwise; his name and his immediate influence as a teacher are destined to be pre-eminently associated with St Andrews.

While holding this office Mr Ferrier published, in 1848, a pamphlet (anonymous), entitled ' Observations on Church and State, suggested by the Duke of Argyll's Essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland; ' and in 1858 a ' Letter to the Right Honourable the Lord Advocate of Scotland on the Necessity of a Change in the Patronage of the University of Edinburgh.' He also continued to write occasional articles in ' Blackwood's Magazine,' which prove that his professional studies, ardently as they were pursued, did not entirely monopolise his attention.

In the earlier years of his professorship, his lectures seem to have been more devoted to setting forth and criticising the various schemes of mental and moral philosophy which have arisen since the time of Descartes and Locke, than to exhibiting in systematic order new views of his own, except in so far as this cannot be avoided in commenting on the doctrines of others. He wrote of his professional labours to a friend:—" I cancel and re-write about a third of my lectures every year; a circumstance which, if it proves that my lectures were bad to begin