PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



THIS book makes no pretence of giving to the 

 world a new theory of the intellectual operations. 

 Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded 

 on the fact that it is an attempt not to supersede, but 

 to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have 

 been either promulgated on its subject by speculative 

 writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their 

 scientific inquiries. 



To cement together the detached fragments of a 

 subject, never yet treated as a whole ; to harmonize 

 the true portions of discordant theories, by supplying 

 the links of thought necessary to connect them, and 

 by disentangling them from the errors with which 

 they are always more or less interwoven ; must 

 necessarily require a considerable amount of original 

 speculation. To other originality than this, the pre- 

 sent work lays no claim. In the existing state of 

 the cultivation of the sciences, there would be a very 

 strong presumption against any one who should 

 imagine that he had effected a revolution in the 

 theory of the investigation of truth, or added any 

 fundamentally new process to the practice of it. 

 The improvement which remains to be effected in 

 the methods of philosophizing (and the author be- 

 lieves that they have much need of improvement) 

 can only consist in performing, more systematically 



b 2 



