The following is a letter, dated 21st March 1862, to Professor Lushington, his friend and biographer:--'I have been very remiss in not acknowledging your photograph, which came safe, and is much admired by all who have seen it. I must get a book for its reception and that of some other worthies, otherwise my children will appropriate it for their collections, with which the house is swarming.... The _ego_ is an infinite and active capacity of _never being anything in particular_. I will uphold that definition against the world. Did you never feel how much you revolted from being fixed and determined? Depend upon it, that is the true nature of a spirit--never to be any determinate existence. This is our real immutability--for death can get hold only of that which has a determinate being. _We_ stand loose from all determinations. That is our chance of escaping his clutches." This expresses Ferrier's views and hopes for an after life: he looked forward to an immortality in which the particular and determinate should disappear and only the absolute element remain--in which death should mean only the rising from the individual into a true and universal life. It is a matter to which he frequently refers, and always in terms of a very similar nature. We shall see how, when the end was coming near, his views remained the same, and he was able to face the inevitable without a qualm or shadow of complaint. CHAPTER VI FERRIER'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY--PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS 'If one were asked,' says Professor Fraser, 'for the English writings which are fitted in the most attractive way to absorb a reader of competent intelligence and imagination in the final or metaphysical question concerning the Being in which we and the world of sensible things participate, Berkeley's _Dialogues_, Hume's _Inquiry into Human Understanding_, and some of the lately published _Philosophical Remains_ of Professor Ferrier are probably those which would best deserve to be mentioned.' It has been given to few philosophers of modern days to write on philosophic questions in a manner at once so lucid and so convincing as that of Ferrier. Nor can it in his case be said that matter is sacrificed to form, for the writer does not hesitate to 'nail his colours to the mast,' as he himself expresses it, and to tackle questions the most vital in their character in a straightforward and uncompromising fashion. His earliest published writings, as we have seen, took the form of a series of seven articles, which appeared, roughly speaking, in alternate months, between February of 1838 and March of 1839. These articles, entitled _An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness_, represented the results of their author's work during the years which had elapsed since he first began to be really interested in philosophy, and to feel that the way of looking at it adopted almost universally in Scotland was not satisfying to himself, or in any way defensible.