something very like materialism in the hands of Brown and others, and he believed that the whole point of view must be changed if a really spiritual philosophy was to take its place. There may be traces of the impetuosity of youth in this attack: much working out was undoubtedly required before it could be said that a system had been established. But all the same this essay is a brilliant piece of philosophic writing—instinct with life and enthusiasm—one which must have made its readers feel that the dry bones of a dead system had wakened into life, and that what they had imagined an abstract and dismal science had become instinct with living, practical interest—something to be 'lived' as well as studied.
The Institutes of Metaphysics—the work by which Ferrier's name will descend to posterity—is a development of the Philosophy of Consciousness; but it is more carefully reasoned out and systematised—the result of many years of thoughtful labour. For several years before the work was published (in 1854) the propositions which are contained in it were developed in the course of Ferrier's regular lectures. The Institutes, or Theory of Knowing and Being, commences with a definition of philosophy as a 'body of reasoned truth,' and states that though there were plenty of dissertations on the subject in existence, there was no philosophy itself—no scheme of demonstrated truth; and this, and not simply a 'contribution' to philosophy was what was now required, and what the writer proposed to give. The divisions into which he separates Philosophy are: first, the Epistemology, or theory of knowledge; secondly, the Agnoiology, or theory of ignorance; and thirdly, the Ontology, or theory of being. The fundamental question is, 'What is the one
