Philosophical Works of the Late James FREDERICK FERRIER, B.A
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This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com Ph 1 . D / $arbarti College ILinrarj LIBRARY OF THE CLASSICAL DEPARTMENT LECTURES on GBEEK PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHICAL WOKKS OF THE LATE JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER B.A. OXON., LL.D. ~ PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ECONOMV 1N THE UNIVERSITY OP ST ANDREWS IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. II. LECTTJEES ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY KDITED BY SIR ALEXANDER GRANT, BART., LUD., PRINCIPAL OP" THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; AND E. L. LUSHTNGTOK, LL.D., LATE PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OK GLASGOW NEW EDITION D WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS KDINBURGII AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXVIII .1// Ilifihts rcxfrvtri 2- HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Classical Department / v 1 CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTORY NOTICE vii LECTURES ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY: /. THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD— INTRODUCTORY, 1 IONIC SCHOOL- Thales 34 Anaximaxder, 48 asaximenes, 54 ITALIC SCHOOL— Pythagoras, 59 ELEATICS— Xenophanes, 79 Parmenides, 88 Zeso, 102 HERACLITUS 109 EMPEDOCLES, "6 ATOMIC SCHOOL 153 ANAXAGORAS, 164 vi CONTENTS. //. THE SOCRATIC PERIOD— THE SOPHISTS .185 SOCRATES, 210 THE CYRENAIC, CYNIC, AND MEGARIC SCHOOLS, . 267 PLATO, 304 ARISTOTLE, 366 STOICS AND EPICUREANS, 420 THE SUCCESSORS OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE, ZENO AND EPICURUS, 456 NEOPLATONISTS, 471 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.* These volumes contain the latest and some of the earliest philosophical writings of James Frederick Ferrier. For the last four or five years of his life he was in the habit of lecturing at St Andrews upon the early Greek Philosophy ; his lectures were care fully written down before delivery, in many cases re-written, and throughout diligently revised. The repeated shocks of illness which, for some years be fore his death, gradually undermined his physical powers, probably rendered his treatment of the subject less perfect than it might otherwise have been, both as to extent in general and elaboration in detail. Nevertheless it is believed that these lectures, frag mentary as they are, contain enough of what is ori ginal and valuable to justify their publication. They will assuredly not make his memory less dear to all who knew and loved him living ; they may possibly help to make it dear to all who love philosophy. * This " Introductory Notice " (written by Professor E. L. Lush- ington, LL.D.) was prefixed to the First Volume of Professor Fer ness ' Lectures on the Early Greek Philosophy, and other Philo sophical Remains,' in two volumes, 1866, and is here reprinted. viii INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. James Frederick Ferrier, son of John Ferrier, W.S., grandson of James Ferrier, an intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott, was born in Edinburgh, June 16, 1808. His mother, Margaret, was sister of Professor John Wilson ; his aunt, Susan Ferrier, honoured by the high praise and the friendship of Scott, was the authoress of ' Marriage,' ' Destiny,' and ' The Inheri tance.' He received his early education in the manse of Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, where he lived in the family of the Rev. Dr Duncan. Here first was awakened in his mind the lively interest and affec tion which he never lost for Virgil, Ovid, and the Latin poets in general : he often spoke in later life of the new source of delight then opened to him in these authors. He also retained through after years a warm attachment both to his earliest place of instruction and to the two sons of his earli est teacher. He studied later at the Edinburgh High School, and under Dr Burney at Greenwich. He attended Edinburgh University for sessions 1825-26 and 1826-27. He went as a fellow-com moner to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1831 ; and became an advo cate at Edinburgh in 1832. Of his pursuits for the next five or six years there is little direct evidence, but to this period belongs mainly the foundation of his strong passion for metaphysical research. It was probably the desire of studying more effectively the German masters of speculative thought that led him to spend several months of the year 1834 at Heidelberg. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. ix He had early selected this pursuit as the most attrac tive and congenial to his powers ; and as far as his devotion to it may have needed for its full growth sympathy and encouragement from another mind, such nourishment was amply supplied by his intimacy with Sir William Hamilton. This intimacy, com mencing in 1831, ripened into a warm friendship, and continued thoroughly cordial and affectionate, both in agreement and in difference on philosophical questions. In one of his early essays Ferrier ex presses his ardent admiration of this great teacher (see vol. ii. p. 300), and in a later treatise, principally directed against some of Sir William Hamilton's posi tions, he speaks thus of him : " He has taught those who study him to think, and he must stand the con sequence, whether they think in unison with himself or not. We conceive, however, that even those who differ from him most would readily own that to his in structive disquisitions they were indebted for at least half of all they know of philosophy." A tribute of loving reverence to Hamilton's memory, written soon after his death, will be found in vol. i. pp. 488-90. The silent workings of home influences had tended not the less surely to arouse and widen his intellectual sympathies. Having relations on both sides so highly gifted with literary ability, it is not surprising that Mr Ferrier should have combined with his meta physical predilections a powerful and at the same time discriminating interest in all varieties of mental culture. Letters still preserved show how frank and X INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. cordial was the intercourse, which lasted till her death in 1854, between him and his aunt, Susan Ferrier. It would be superfluous to enlarge upon the warm admiration which he always felt and avowed for his uncle, John Wilson, whose son-in-law he became in 1837, and whose literary remains he was busily en gaged in editing during the years 1856, 1857, and 1858. He used to express himself, speaking of Wil son, in some such terms as these — " I find, well as I knew him, that I can hardly even now bring up to myself a real picture of what he was in his brightest moods, far less could I hope to communicate the truth to others who had not known him." His uncle's house presented many opportunities to Mr Ferrier of mixing in society that included names of high political and literary eminence. From this conversation the seed that fell upon the youthful mind of such a listener would bring forth rich fruit of observation and reflection in after hours. He used to describe a meeting in the summer of 1825, when he saw together at Elleray, Wilson's residence near the Lake of Windermere, Scott, Wordsworth, and Canning, as among the most radiant memories of his life. A darker association was to colour his latest remembrance of the great Novelist, not many years after this date. " He used to refer with emo tion to one sad occasion when he came immediately in contact with the author of 'Waverley.' It was on that gloomy voyage when the suffering man was conveyed to Leith from London, on his return from INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xi his ill-fated foreign journey. Mr Ferrier was also a passenger, and scarcely dared to look on the almost unconscious form of one whose genius he so warmly admired." * It may be there are those who will in coming years speak to their children of similar feel ings awakened in themselves, as they watched a feeble frame, whose worn features revealed, amid the light of piercing intellect, acute suffering held down by heroic endurance, in the quiet town of St Andrews. To philosophy he ever gave his first and unwaver ing devotion ; he doubtless felt himself, and it will probably be allowed by discerning judges, that the genuine interest which he maintained to the last in literature not technically or nominally philosophical, made him in no way less able to preserve his primary allegiance unalloyed. He read works of imagination with deep imaginative sympathy : a strong poetical element in his own nature responded vividly to the subtlest touch of all true poetry. His numerous con tributions to ' Blackwood's Magazine ' attest to what extent the various sides of literature possessed attrac tions for him. For special mention may be selected, — The Translation of Tieck's Pietro d'Abano, in August 1839 ; of Deinhardstein's Picture of Danae, September 1841 ; The Tittle-Tattle of a Philosopher, December 1841 ; and the Review of Miss Barrett's Poems, November 1844. To some among the many readers whose admiration for Mrs Browning's genius * Quoted from Principal Forbes's address to the Students of St Andrews, November 1864. xu INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. is deep and sincere, it may not be without interest to peruse an extract from this article, written at a time when her extraordinary powers were far less generally recognised than now: — " If the poetess does not always command our unqualified approbation, we are at all times disposed to bend in reverence before the deep-hearted and highly accomplished woman — a woman whose powers appear to us to extend over a wider and profounder range of thought and feeling than ever before fell within the intellectual compass of any of the softer sex. If we might venture to divine this lady's moral and intellectual character from the general tone of her writings, we should say, that never did woman's mind dwell more habitually among the thoughts of a solemn experience — never was woman's genius impressed more profoundly with the earnestness of life, or sanctified more purely by the overshadow ing awfulness of death.