Page:The British Controversialist - 1867.djvu/498

Rh the mind is, at all events, in direct contact with the visible world, and not merely with its own impressions—that, in short, the outward world is the impression. In subsequent lectures the subject was discussed from an historical point of view. Farrier sought in my mythology and poetry, as well as ancient philosophy, confirmation of the doctrine of 'direct presentation' in perception. He referred to the Fetichism of ancient paganism, as identifying nature and mind, and quoted in illustration of its more refined operation the famous passage from Wordsworth on the Mythologization of Nature by the Greeks ("Excursion" Book IV.) beginning,—

"Later, philosophy having become analytical, and ultimately artificial, had joined with literature in subverting the natural 'representation,' and in substituting 'the representative ideas of the schools,' although a few ardent and sincere minds had retained their respect for nature and truth, and so were led to seek relief from such inventions. Of these, at least in Britain, Berkeley was among the greatest, and he had indicated the return to early truth which must terminate the circuit of philosophy, and shall result in the second illumination, far purer and less troubled than the first. Such was the scope of these lectures, so far as they linger in my our memory, after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century.

Shortly after this in 1844, Sir William Hamilton became seriously invalid, and in the success succeeding session Professor Ferrier—who for years together, had been daily in his company, for hours debating, with the strong earnestness of sincere friendship and honest conviction, the tenets of the philosophical schools—read his class lectures for him, occasionally interpolating, by permission of their writer, expositions of his own, memorable for their subtlety and eloquence even to this day, by those who hurt him.

In the interval included in the narrative given above, Ferrier contributed to Blackwood's Magazine, "The Crisis of Modern Speculation," "Berkeley and Idealism," being papers on a notice of Samuel Bailey's "Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, designed to show the Unsoundness of the Celebrated Speculation," Mr. Bailey of Sheffield issued "A letter to a Philosopher, in reply to some recent attempts to vindicate Berkeley's Theory of Vision; and this gave occasion to another paper in June, 1843, in which the topic was pursued controversially, and supplemented by a speculation on the senses. All these papers are ingenious and profound, suggestive and argumentative, graceful and simple, full of happy expressions and sometimes noticeable for smiting phrases in which his wit and humor are shown no less than his mastery of speculative thought and poetic utterance; and they may be said to contain the very pith of the loftiest idealistic philosophy of recent times from these sufficiently full account of