Philosopher and historian, was born 20th June 1723, at Logierait in Perthshire, where his father was parish minister. He studied at St. Andrews and Edinburgh, and as chaplain to the Black Watch was present at Fontenoy (1745). In 1757 he succeeded David Hume as keeper of the Advocate’s Library in Edinburgh, and was next professor, first of Natural Philosophy (1759), and subsequently (1764) of Moral Philosophy. He accompanied the young Earl of Chesterfield (1774) on his travels on the Continent, and acted as secretary to the commission sent out by Lord North to try to arrange the disputes with the North American colonies (1778–79). Ill health compelled him in 1785 to resign his professorship, in which he was succeeded by Dugald Stewart. He next travelled on the Continent, then lived at Neidpath Castle, and latterly at St. Andrews, where he died 22nd of February 1816. His works are an “Essay on Civil Society” (1766), “Institutes of Moral Philosophy” (1772), “History of the Roman Republic” (1782; long a standard authority), and “Moral and Political Science” (1792).

Personal

  He had the manners of a man of the world, and the demeanor of a high-bred gentleman, insomuch that his company was much sought after; for though he conversed with ease, it was with a dignified reserve. If he had any fault in conversation, it was of a piece with what I have said of his temper, for the elevation of his mind prompted him to such sudden transitions and dark allusions that it was not always easy to follow him, though he was a very good speaker. He had another talent, unknown to any but his intimates, which was a boundless vein of humour, which he indulged when there were none others present, and which flowed from his pen in every familiar letter he wrote. He had the faults, however, that belonged to that character, for he was apt to be jealous of his rivals, and indignant against assumed superiority. His wife used to say that it was very fortunate that I was so much in Edinburgh, as I was a great peacemaker among them. She did not perceive that her own husband was the most difficult of them all.

  His hair was silky and white; his eyes animated and light-blue; his cheeks sprinkled with broken red, like autumnal apples, but fresh and healthy; his lips thin, and the under one curled. A severe paralytic attack had reduced his animal vitality, though it left no external appearance, and he required considerable artificial heat. His raiment, therefore, consisted of half-boots, lined with fur; cloth breeches; a long cloth waistcoat, with capacious pockets; a single-breasted coat; a cloth greatcoat, also lined with fur, and a felt hat, commonly tied by a ribbon below the chin. His boots were black; but, with this exception, the whole coverings, including the hat, were of a quaker-gray color, or of a whitish-brown; and he generally wore the furred greatcoat even within doors. When he walked forth, he used a tall staff, which he commonly held at arm’s length out towards the right side; and his two coats, each buttoned by only the upper button, flowed open below, and exposed the whole of his curious and venerable figure. His gait and air were noble; his gestures slow; his look full of dignity and composed fire. He looked like a philosopher from Lapland.

  He was none the less, in affection as well as in character, a thorough Celt, with all the impulsiveness and dash that belonged to the race; and in later days, when Jacobitism was only a romantic memory, he was wont to delight his friends by his singing of Jacobite songs. Alone amongst the philosophers he spoke the language, and was stirred by the traditions of Gaul, and retained for that race to the end of his life the passionate attachment which it never fails to inspire…. Amongst a galaxy of men—none of the first rank in intellect, but all of more than respectable calibre—he has a place all his own. He achieved it partly by his wide and varied experience of life. But it was aided by his Celtic temperament, which gave a freedom and a verve to his speculation which was lacking to others of his school. Morality was to him essentially a thing of great deeds upon a great stage. The type he sought for was that of Aristotle’s great-souled man. The subtleties of free thinking would have vexed his soul as much as the subleties of doctrine; but he was more than any of them—however little he would have avowed it—the type of a purely pagan morality. His stoicism was a picturesque fiction, indeed, and none confessed more frankly than he that in the affairs of everyday life he was nervous and irritable to the last degree.

  At ninety-three there was still wondrous freshness in the venerable face, with the ribstone-pippin complexion, the mild blue eyes, the soft, humorous mouth, the silvery hair. There was the old mental alertness about everything that was new, and the aged philosopher listened eagerly when the divinity student who attended him read out to him the newspapers. He was a young man when the Rebellion of ’45 broke out, lived to read the bulletins of the battle of Waterloo. At last, in 1816, he died, his final words as he turned to his daughters by the bedside being the exclamation of bright assurance: “There is another world,” and in a few minutes he was gone to see it. One of the best of a brilliant company of literary comrades, he was the last to die. He had seen his old friends pass away one by one, in fame, honour, and old age. After having lived in the bright old days of Scottish literature, he survived to see with unjealous eyes another brilliant day dawn which should rival the past.

General

  It was provoking to hear those who were so ready to give loud praises to very shallow and imperfect English productions—to curry favor, as we supposed, with the booksellers and authors concerned,—taking every opportunity to undermine the reputation of Ferguson’s book. “It was not a Roman history,” said they (which it did not say it was). “This delineation of the constitution of the republic is well sketched; but for the rest, it is anything but history, and then it is so incorrect that it is a perfect shame.” All his other books met with the same treatment, while, at the same time, there were a few of us who could not refrain from saying that Ferguson’s was the best history of Rome; that what he had omitted was fabulous or insignificant, and what he had wrote was more profound in research into characters, and gave a more just delineation of them than any book now extant. The same thing was said of his book on Moral Philosophy, which we held to be the book that did the most honor of any to the Scotch philosophers, because it gave the most perfect picture of moral virtues, with all their irresistible attractions. His book on Civil Society ought only to be considered as a college exercise, and yet there is in it a turn of thought and a species of eloquence peculiar to Ferguson.

  Read the first, and half the second, volume, quarto, of Dr. Ferguson’s “Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.” He was Dugald Stewart’s predecessor, and, as I attended his lecture, I heard the substance of his book. He has, in some degree, the Scotch fault of expressing common ideas in a technical form. He had adopted the very just, stoical principle, “that the state of the mind is of more importance to happiness than outward circumstances;” but he is so entirely and constantly occupied with it, as to forget everything else. There is something not unbecoming a moral teacher in his austere, dogmatic, sententious manner; and he contemplates human life with a cold sternness worthy of those magnanimous moralists whom he professes to follow…. It is not a pleasing, but it is an improving book; it elevates the moral sentiments.

  Ferguson’s “History of the Roman Republic” is not only well written, but meritorious for its researches into the constitution of Rome.

  In Roman history, Hooke, the friend of Pope, was first in the field; and to him succeeded Dr. Ferguson, with his dry book on the Roman republic.

  Ferguson’s style and manner are not so subdued as those of the Scottish metaphysicians who preceded him. He has more of a leaping mode of composition, as if he had an audience before him, and is at times eloquent or magniloquent. I have an idea that, as Dugald Stewart drew his philosophy mainly from Reid, so he got his taste for social studies from Ferguson, who may also have helped to give him a livelier style,—the academic dignity, however, being entirely Stewart’s own.

  Ferguson’s book has the superficial merits which were calculated for the ordinary mind. He possessed the secret of that easy gallicised style, which was more or less common to the whole Scott school, including Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith. He makes elegant and plausible remarks, and the hasty reader does not perceive that the case is gained by the evasion, instead of the solution, of difficulties. Here and there we come across an argument or an illustration which seems to indicate greater acuteness…. Ferguson was in politics what Blair was in theology—a facile and dexterous declaimer, whose rhetoric glides over the surface of things without biting into their substance. He expounds well till he comes to the real difficulty, and then placidly evades the dilemma.

  A work [“History of the Roman Republic”] which under the guise of history is in truth a series of lectures on ethics and politics, with a strong leaven of stoicism.