He was born in the manse at
Ardchattan,
Argyll, the son of the parish minister, Rev Hugh Fraser, and his wife, Maria Helen Campbell. He was the eldest of twelve children. Due to ill-health he was educated by his mother then sent to Glasgow aged 14 to study divinity at the
University of Glasgow under Prof
James Mylne. However, he did not find
Glasgow to his liking as a city and stayed there only one year. He completed his studies at
University of Edinburgh, graduating at Divinity Hall in 1843. This was a tumultuous year in the Scottish church, and Fraser decided to join the Free Church following the
Disruption. He was ordained in 1844 and became minister of the small parish of
Cramond on the
Firth of Forth just on the outer edge of Edinburgh. Remaining in
Edinburgh he succeeded Sir William Hamilton as professor of logic at
New College in 1846 and remained in this role until 1856. He edited the
North British Review from 1850 to 1857, and in 1856, having previously been a
Free Church of Scotland minister, he succeeded
Sir William Hamilton as professor of Logic and
Metaphysics at Edinburgh University. In 1859 he became Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the university and retained this role for 30 years. In 1831 Sir William Hamilton was appointed to the chair of logic and
metaphysics, and Fraser became his pupil. He himself said "I owe more to Hamilton than to any other influence." It was about this time also that he began his study of Berkeley and
Coleridge, and deserted his early
phenomenalism for the conception of a spiritual will as the universal cause. In the
Biographia this "Theistic faith" appears in its full development (see the concluding chapter), and is especially important as perhaps the nearest approach to
Kantian ethics made by original English philosophy. Apart from the philosophical interest of the
Biographia, the work contains valuable pictures of the Lam of Lorne and Argyllshire society in the early 19th century, of university life in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and a history of the
North British Review. In 1858 he was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh his proposer being
Philip Kelland. He received an
honorary Doctorate of Letters (D.Litt.) from the
University of Dublin in June 1902. Until his wife's death in 1907, he lived at a house in
Hawthornden near
Lasswade. Thereafter he lived at 34 Melville Street in
Edinburgh's fashionable West End. Fraser is buried in the small northern cemetery at
Lasswade with his wife, Jemima Gordon (1819–1907), against the north boundary. ==Family==