Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Philosophical Remains (1883)/Introductory Lecture, Nov. 1857
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE,
NOVEMBER 1857.
1. One of the topics touched upon in the Introduction to the 'Institutes of Metaphysic' is the necessity of philosophy being reasoned, the obligation which is incumbent on its teacher to exhibit his views in a demonstrative and systematic form. I now propose to offer a few remarks by way of illustration, enlargement, and enforcement of this truth; because the longer I reflect upon it, the more am I convinced of the stringency of the obligation referred to. I am prompted to make these observations on account of the hostility which the attempt to reduce speculative science to precision and exactitude frequently calls forth. I venture to oppose the prejudice which holds that truth can scarcely be made to square with logic, that sublime knowledge is incompatible with rigorous method, that profound thought sets at defiance the formulæ of lucid order; and opposing myself to this prejudice, I shall attempt to show you that the true ends of tuition can only be fulfilled by means of a course of instruction which brings knowledge into harmony with system, and exhibits thought in the light and symmetry of demonstration.
2. The aim of all education is twofold: it is twofold whether looked at on the side of him that teaches or on the side of him that learns; that is, on the part of the student, one aim is the acquisition of knowledge, the other aim is the development and exercise and cultivation of his intellectual powers. His aim is thus double or twofold: he aims at the attainment of truth, he aims also at getting his capacities of thought called forth, trained, and disciplined. In the same way on the part of the teacher the end or aim of education is twofold: he also has a double function to discharge; he has to aim at the communication of knowledge, and he has moreover to aim at the cultivation and exercise of the faculties of those whom he endeavours to instruct.
3. Another mode in which the distinction may be put is this. Every intellectual pursuit is to be regarded as at once a science and a discipline. These words are indeed little more than two forms of expression for the same thing, and as such they are sometimes used convertibly in our own and in other languages, yet they are not absolutely synonymous. The term science rather indicates that end of intellectual endeavour which centres in the possession of knowledge; the term discipline rather points to that other end of intellectual endeavour which centres in the evolution and exercise of reason and reflection. Every intellectual pursuit has thus two sides, a theoretical and a practical. Viewed on its theoretical side, it consists of a body of knowledge, and may properly be called a science; viewed on its practical side, it is a means of unfolding, training, and exercising the mind, of educing its latent capacities of thought (as the very word education indicates), and as such, it is properly called a discipline. This is what is meant by saying that instruction is or ought to be both theoretical and practical. It ought to be theoretical, because its business is to impart knowledge; it ought to be practical, because its business is to exercise and strengthen the mind. You will thus perceive (and I make this remark parenthetically), that practical teaching, in the sense in which I have explained it—and I believe this is the proper view to take of it—is something very different from what is usually understood by that expression. Practical teaching is generally regarded as the communication of a knowledge which may be useful to us in the daily concerns of life, in our professional pursuits, and in the ordinary intercourse of society. Far be it from rue to disparage the importance of such knowledge; but the teaching which imparts it is rather theoretical than practical. Practical teaching, I again say, is that which looks not so much to the conveyance of knowledge as to the growth and culture of the faculties by which that knowledge is received.
4. These, then, are the two inseparable ends which all properly directed education keeps in view. It does not aim at either, to the exclusion or prejudice of the other. But if it gives a preference to either, it rather aims at overtaking the end by which the mind is disciplined, than the end by which the mind is stored. It endeavours to be theoretical, that is, to impart knowledge; but it labours above all things to be practical, that is, to discipline the faculties. Hence it is that mathematics and the dead languages occupy so early and so prominent a place in our systems of academical instruction. Valuable as these are as an acquisition, they are still more valuable as a training; they are to be regarded rather as practical than as theoretical instruments of tuition. If you were all to awaken suddenly some fine morning and to find yourselves expert mathematicians and accomplished scholars without having made any effort to become so, you would have lost the best part of the benefit which these studies are fitted to convey. Your minds might be filled with knowledge, but your own faculties and your powers of attention, of judgment, of comparison, of generalisation, and of reason, would be in abeyance.
5. The case I have just put is a fanciful and somewhat extreme supposition. It is certain, however, that knowledge may be acquired under conditions which cultivate in very different degrees the powers of the acquirer; in other words, it is certain that one man may acquire knowledge, and in the attainment may find his whole intellectual being enlightened and invigorated, while another man may possess the same knowledge without receiving a corresponding benefit in the way of mental improvement. Thus, for example, the man who might acquire a knowledge of the Latin language, as he does that of his mother tongue, by associating in early life with those who spoke it, would not, by means of that acquisition, have his powers cultivated in an equal degree with those of the man who amid alien influences had learned that language by dint of systematic and persevering study; the former individual might have a more fluent command over the language in its practical usage, but the latter would have a far deeper and more rational insight into the universal structure and mechanism of speech. His faculties have been aroused and strengthened by the difficulties they had overcome; those of the other, who had imbibed the language instinctively without an effort from the society that surrounded him, lie dormant and inert, or at least the acquirement of the Latin tongue has not contributed to their development. Again, a large amount of the mere facts of physical science may be known by the superficial smatterer no less than by the profound mathematician. Yet, by what a different tenure in the two cases are these truths held! How different is the mental training which their possession evinces, the enlightenment by which they are accompanied! In the one case they are lifeless and isolated facts without unity or coherence; in the other case they constitute an organic whole, they are rooted in central principles, evolved by elaborate calculation, linked together by intelligible affinities, and illuminated by the light of reason.
6. If it be true, then, that the end of education is twofold, this, a fortiori, must be true in regard to philosophy, the highest instrument of education; and accordingly the teacher of philosophy has to consider what the proper means are by which the twofold aim of science may be overtaken and its double function performed. He has to consider what these means are, and he has, moreover, to carry them into execution. In regard to the one end, that which consists in the communication of truth or knowledge, it is obvious that this is to be attained simply by the statement of truth, or of what the instructor believes to be such. In regard to the other end, that which consists in the development and cultivation of the student's intelligence (the practical part of the teacher's aim), it is almost equally obvious that this is to be overtaken only by the exhibition of truth in a systematic order and in a reasoned form; or, to express this shortly, the exposition of truth is the means by which the mind is stored, the exhibition of system is the means by which the mind is disciplined. And hence philosophy, a philosophy which would overtake both of these ends, as all philosophy should, and which would at once fill and discipline the mind, must be a scheme of systematised truth. And as system is merely another name for reason, it is thus the duty of all speculative philosophy—of that discipline whose business it is to fulfil the highest demands of education, and to teach the student that hardest of all lessons both to teach and to learn, namely, how to think—it is the, duty of this science to be from first to last a consistent scheme of methodised and reasoned knowledge.
7. There is an old Greek saying, Πολυμαθία νοῦν οὐ διδάσκει, that is, much learning or multifarious knowledge does not truly educate the intellect. What more is required? This additional element is required, that our knowledge be reduced to system; that it be strictly methodised. If knowledge is the light of the soul, system is the light of knowledge. Indeed, it is not going too far to affirm that truth is intelligible—intelligible to its possessor—only in so far as it is amenable to the forms of reason; and it is certain that he can make it intelligible to others only in proportion to the success with which he can evolve it in an unbroken series out of the principles from which it springs. So far is truth from being repugnant to logic, I hold that this is the vesture in which she most delights to clothe herself. She shrinks not from dialectic, that is the very element in which she lives; and she rejoices in the symmetry of demonstration. It is only by presenting knowledge in the form of reason that the teacher can expect to elicit and train the reason of those whom he addresses. Reason in one man listens to nothing except reason in another; thought, genuine thought, in one mind, responds only to the call of genuine thought in another mind. But thoughts, in order to be genuine, in order to have root, must coexist in a vital and organic unity, and not as a tissue of floating fragmentary opinions. And hence it is that it is only by means of the exhibition of systematic thinking on the part of the teacher that lessons of thinking can be taught to those whom he instructs.
8. I do not say that the teacher of philosophy will always succeed in setting to work the minds of his students by showing them in a methodical and concatenated order the workings of his own reason; but when that method fails I certainly know of no other which can succeed, of no other by which the study of metaphysics may be made a practical discipline and a means of developing and cultivating the intelligence of the student. This assuredly is not to be effected by mapping out the human mind into a set of independent faculties, and exhibiting in a desultory manner the facts of an empirical and unsystematic psychology. Such teaching is at the best merely theoretical. It is not discipline: it contributes nothing to the practical development of the student's intellectual life. I have said that truth, strictly speaking, is intelligible only when deduced from principles, and presented, in a rigorously reasoned form. I say this more particularly in regard to metaphysical truth. I limit my assertion to the truth with which philosophy has to deal; and while I maintain that the regeneration of metaphysical science can be expected only from the importation of demonstration into its processes, I affirm, likewise, that its hitherto unsatisfactory characters, its impotent condition, and the disrepute into which it has fallen, are in a large measure attributable to the unreasoned form, the unsystematic procedure which it has adopted. On this latter topic, the unsettled state of metaphysics, I now propose to say a few words, with an eye to the conclusion that a better condition of things can be looked for only when Reason and the light and the force of pure thinking have been brought to bear more vigorously and perseveringly than has ever yet been done in the cultivation of this science.