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In Part 4 of his highly acclaimed book The Democratic Intellect, George Elder Davie tells a dramatic and riveting story about the decline of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy in the course of the nineteenth century. A central role in the story is given to James Frederick Ferrier, Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews from 1845 until his death in 1864. The Democratic Intellect was published in 1961, but Davie’s fascination with Ferrier, he tells us, had begun nearly thirty years earlier in 1936, when he first read about Ferrier in Torgny Segerstedt’s book The Problem of Knowledge in Scottish Philosophy. As a result, he found himself

Davie’s estimate of Ferrier was not eccentric. Ferrier’s contemporary, Principal John Tulloch, a scholar of great distinction and philosophical acumen, concludes a long commemorative essay, ‘Professor Ferrier and the Higher Philosophy’, with this fine tribute.

Fifty years on, the estimate of Ferrier’s distinction had not diminished. In 1911, the University of St Andrews marked its 500th anniversary with a special publication – Votiva Tabella. The chapter on philosophy was written by G. F. Stout, then Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. He says this of Ferrier.