Ferrier, JAMES FREDERICK, metaphysician, was born in Edinburgh, June 16, 1808. His father was a brother of Miss Ferrier, the novelist; his mother, a sister of Christopher North. He was educated by Dr Duncan at Ruthwell, at the Edinburgh High School, and at Greenwich by Dr
Burney, next entered the university of Edinburgh, and passed thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1831; next year he was admitted to the Scottish bar, but never practised, while the dominant influence of Sir William Hamilton made him a metaphysician. In 1842 he was elected to the chair of History in the university of Edinburgh, and in 1845 to that of Moral Philosophy in the university of St Andrews. Ferrier early attracted notice by some metaphysical essays, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine; and in 1854 he published the Institutes of Metaphysics, in which he endeavours to construct a system of idealism in a series of propositions demonstrated after the manner of Euclid. He afterwards edited the collected works of his uncle and father-in-law, Christopher North. His own Lectures on Greek Philosophy were edited in 1866, with a life prefixed, by his son-in-law, Sir Alexander Grant. Ferrier died at St Andrews, June 11, 1864.