Page:James Frederick Ferrier.djvu/68

64 Of these early days Professor Fraser writes:—'My personal intercourse with Ferrier was very infrequent, but very delightful when it did occur. He was surely the most picturesque figure among the Scottish philosophers—easy, graceful, humorous, eminently subtle, and with a fine literary faculty—qualities not conspicuous in most of them. When I was a private member of Sir W. Hamilton's advanced class in metaphysics in 1838-39, and for some years after, I was often at Sir William's house, and Ferrier was sometimes of the party on these occasions. I remember his kindly familiarity with us students, the interest and sympathy with which he entered into metaphysical discussion, his help and co-operation in a metaphysical society which we were endeavouring to organise. His essays on the Philosophy of Consciousness were then being issued in Blackwood, and were felt to open questions strange at a time when speculation was almost dead in Scotland—Reid at a discount, Brown found empty, and Hamilton, with Kant, only struggling into ascendency.

'In these days, if I remember right, Ferrier lived in Carlton Street, Stockbridge—an advocate whose interest was all in letters and philosophy, a student of simple habits, fond of German, not a conspicuous talker, of easy polished manners and fond of a joke, with a scientific interest in all sorts of facts and their meanings, and perhaps a disposition to paradox. I remember the interest he took in phenomena of "mesmeric sleep," as it was called. An eminent student was sometimes induced for experiment to submit himself to mesmeric influence at these now far-off evening gatherings at Sir William's. To Ferrier the phenomena suggested curious speculation, but I think without scientific result.' The subject was