said to reduce all things to the phenomena of consciousness, it does the same to every nothing. What falls out of consciousness becomes incogitable; it lapses, not into nothing, but into what is contradictory. The material universe per se, and all its qualities per se, are not only absolutely unknowable, but absolutely unthinkable. We do indeed know substance, but only as object plus subject—as matter mecum or in cognition as thought together with the self.
It may be true that we cannot claim for Ferrier complete originality in his thinking; work on very similar lines was being carried on elsewhere. It is not difficult to trace throughout his writings the mode of his development. The earlier works are evidently influenced by Fichte and his school, since the personal ego and individual freedom figure as the principal conceptions in our knowledge; and even while the Scottish school of psychologists is being combated, the influence of Hamilton is very manifest. But as time goes on, Ferrier's ideas become more concrete; the theory of consciousness becomes more absolute in its conception; the human or individual element is less conspicuous as the universal element is more, which signifies that gradually he approaches closer to the standpoint of the later German thinkers by a careful study of their works, though for the most part it is Reid and Hamilton his criticisms have in view, and not the corresponding work of Kant.
Still, we should say that Ferrier's attitude represented another phase in the same struggle against abstraction and towards unity in knowledge, rather than being a simple outcome of the German influence in Scotland. This last assumption he at least repudiated with energy, and boldly claimed to have developed and completed his
