FER'GUSON, AnAm (1723-1816). A Scottish philosopher and historian. He was born at Logierait, Perthshire, where his father was parish minister; studied at the universities of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, and in 1745 was appointed chaplain to the Forty-second Regiment, in which capacity Ise was pre,e11t in the battle of Fontenoy, and is said to have charged the enemy sword in hand, among the foremost of the regi• meat. In 1757 he succeeded David flume as keeper of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh. The same year he took a great interest in the su•ce*s of the tragedy of Douglas, written by his friend John Home, and wrote in its defense The Morality of Marx Plays (1757), which brought him into considerable notiee. Ile was appointed professor in Edinburgh University first of natu ral philosophy, in 1759, and subsequently (1764) of moral philosophy. The year after lie pub• fished his Essay on the History of Civil Society.
then devoted some time to collecting mate rial for a 1:0111:111 but his work was inter rupted by travel on the Continent with the young Earl of Chesterfield in 1774-76, and in 1778 by his duties as secretary to the commission sent out by Lord North to try to arrange the disputes be tween the North American Colonies and England. In 1783 appeared his chief work, The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (3 vols.). It is a carefully written narrative of the history of the Roman people during five hundred years. Two years later ill health forced Ferguson to give up his professor ship, and 'in 1792 he published his academic lectures under the title of Principles of Moral and Political Science. His Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1772) has been used as a text-book in several foreign universities. Consult the biographical sketch by John Small (1S64).