H/E was the son of Rev.Adam Ferguson, minister of the parish of Loarerait, Perthshire, and was born June 20, 1723.
The Scottish ministers often belonged to good families in these times, and Carlyle describes Ferguson as the son of a Highland clergyman with good connections and a Highland pride and spirit.He received his early education partly from his father, partly at the parish school.We are ever discovering traces of the influence of the parish schools of Scotland in producing its great men.He afterwards went to the gram mar school of Perth, where he excelled in classics and the composition of essays, which has always had a high place in Scotland, fostered by the very circumstance that boys had to unlearn the Scottish and learn the English tongue.Thence he resorted to the University of St.Andrews, where he graduated May 4, 1742, with a high reputation in classics, mathematics, and metaphysics.He now entered on the study of theology, first at St.Andrews, and then in Edinburgh, where he fell into the circle of Robertson, Blair, Wedderburn, and Carlyle, and joined them in forming a debating society.Before finishing his theological course, he was appointed deputy-chaplain of the Highland forty-second regiment, and was present at the battle of Fontenoy, where he went into action at the head of the attacking column with a drawn sword in his hand.His military career helped him afterwards to give accurate descriptions of battles in -- his "Roman History," and furnished him opportunities for studying human nature and politics.He never had any predilection for the clerical profession, and abandoned it altogether on the death of his father.After spending some time in Holland, as so many Scottish youths had done in the previous century, he returned to his old associates in Edinburgh, where he was appointed, in 1757, David Hume's successor as librarian and clerk in the Advocate's Library.He there became a member of the "Select Society" instituted {256} in 1754 by Allan Ramsay, and holding its meetings in one of the inner apartments of the library, for literary discussion, philosophical inquiry, and improvement in public speaking.Among its members were Hume, Robertson, Smith, John Home, Wilkie, Lord Hailes, Lord Monboddo, Sir John Dalrymple, and the elder Mr.Tytler, the men who constituted the bright literary constellation of their age and Country.This society declined after a time, but was renewed in 1762, under the name (at the suggestion of Ferguson) of the " Poker Club." Ferguson became involved in the controversy stirred by his friend Home writing the play of Douglas, and published " The Morality of Stage Plays seriously Considered." He seems to have left the office of librarian rather abruptly, being allured by an offer to become tutor to the sons of Lord Bute.By the influence of his friends he was made professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh in 1759, and David Hume remarked: "Ferguson had more genius than any of them, as he had made himself so much master of a difficult science, viz., natural philosophy, which he had never studied but when at college, in three months, so as to be able to teach it." In 1760, he was elected to an office more congenial to him, that of professor of pneumatics and moral philosophy, as successor to Mr.Balfour, who took the chair of the law of nature and nations.In less than two years he published his " Essay on the History of Civil Society," a work on which he had been engaged for a considerable time.It was conceived in the manner of Montesquieu, but dwelt on elements at work in the formation of civil society which the French author had overlooked.Part I.treats of the "General Characteristics of Human Nature." Works on social economy proceed very much on the principle that man is mainly swayed by a desire to promote his own interests, and they furnish no analysis of the other interests which men look to.They do not consider that man has social and conscientious feelings, by which many are influenced quite as much as by self-love; and that he is as often swayed by caprice, vanity, and passion, as by a cold-hearted selfishness.Ferguson perceived this.Mankind, we are told, are devoted to interest, and this in all commercial nations is undoubtedly true.But it does not follow that they are by their natural dispositions averse to society and mutual affection.{257} Speaking of those who deny moral sentiment, he says that they are fond of detecting the fraud by which moral restraints have been imposed; "as if to censure a fraud were not already to take a part on the side of morality." "The foreigner who believed that Othello on the stage was enraged for the loss of his handkerchief was not more mistaken than the reasoner who imputes any of the more vehement passions of men to the impressions of mere profit or loss." So, after discussing the question of the state of nature, he treats of the principles of self-preservation, of union among mankind, of war and dissension, of intellectual powers, of moral sentiment, of happiness, of national felicity.In unfolding these, be insists that mankind should be studied in groups or in society.He then traces these principles in the history of rude nations, of policy and arts, the advancement of civil and commercial arts, the decline of nations, corruption of political slavery.The tone of the work is healthy and liberal, but is filled with common-place thought and observation.I find a sixth edition published in 1793.After this it was not much heard of The French Revolution gave men more earnest questions to think of.But these disquisitions, and still more effectively the publication of the " Wealth of Nations," in 1776, kindled a taste for social inquiries in the University of Edinburgh and in the capital of Scotland.
