An Edinburgh Eleven: Professor Fraser

MP3 Audio CD. An Edinburgh Eleven: Professor Fraser (in LibriVox 11th Anniversary Collection )

PROFESSOR CAMPBELL FRASER.


Not long ago I was back in the Old University--how well I remember
pointing it out as the jail to a stranger, who had asked me to show him
round. I was in one of the library ante-rooms, when some one knocked,
and I looked up, to see Campbell Fraser framed in the doorway. I had
not looked on that venerable figure for half a dozen years. I had
forgotten all my metaphysics. Yet it all came back with a rush. I was
on my feet, wondering if I existed strictly so called.

Calderwood and Fraser had both their followings. The moral philosophers
wore an air of certainty, for they knew that if they stuck to
Calderwood he would pull them through. You cannot lose yourself in the
back garden. But the metaphysicians had their doubts. Fraser led them
into strange places, and said he would meet them there again next day.
They wandered to their lodgings, and got into difficulties with their
landlady for saying that she was only an aggregate of sense phenomena.
Fraser was rather a hazardous cure for weak intellects. Young men whose
anchor had been certainty of themselves went into that class floating
buoyantly on the sea of facts, and came out all adrift--on the sea of
theory--in an open boat--rudderless--one oar--the boat scuttled. How
could they think there was any chance for them, when the professor was
not even sure of himself? I see him rising in a daze from his chair and
putting his hands through his hair. "Do I exist," he said,
thoughtfully, "strictly so called?" The students (if it was the
beginning of the session) looked a little startled. This was a matter
that had not previously disturbed them. Still, if the professor was in
doubt, there must be something in it. H