recognise in him a metaphysical genius whose achievements the world will not willingly let die.
1. From a notice of Ferrier's 'Institutes of Metaphysic,' by Dr Wirth, one of the Editors of the 'Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik,' vol. xxx. p. 243 (1857):—
" We hail in this volume one of the cheering signs that English philosophy has raised itself above the one-sided empiricism which has long been predominant in it, to a higher standpoint of knowledge, uniting empiricism and idealism; at the same time a sign of the approach towards German idealistic speculation, noticeable too in other instances, among the deeper thinkers on the other side of the Channel. While our German philosophy has descended step by step from the ethereal height on which in earlier days Fichte's Idealism moved, till in some writers it has taken a completely sensualistic form, and so laid the foundation for the most determined materialism—a process analogous to the evolution of Greek philosophy in its second period, beginning with the idealism of Plato, and ending in sensualism, materialism, and lastly, a scepticism despairing of all knowledge — writings like this of Ferrier's seem to prove that, conversely, English
