PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



This book makes no pretense of giving to the world a new theory of the 

 intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is ground- 

 ed 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 sub- 

 ject by speculative writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their 

 scientific inquiries. 



To cement together the detached fragments of a subject, never yet treat- 

 ed as a whole ; to harmonize the true portions of discordant theories, by 

 supplying the links of thought necessary to connect them, and by disentan- 

 gling them from the errors with which they are always more or less inter- 

 woven, must necessarily require a considerable amount of original specula- 

 tion. To other originality than this, the present 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 effect- 

 ed 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 per- 

 forming more systematically and accurately operations with which, at least 

 in their elementary form, the human intellect, in some one or other of its 

 employments, is already familiar. 



In the portion of the work which treats of Ratiocination, the author has 

 not deemed it necessary to enter into technical details which may be ob- 

 tained in so perfect a shape from the existing treatises on what is termed 

 the Logic of the Schools. In the contempt entertained by many modern 

 philosophers for the syllogistic art, it will be seen that he by no means par- 

 ticipates ; though the scientific theory on which its defense is usually rest- 

 ed appears to him erroneous : and the view which he has suggested of the 

 nature and functions of the Syllogism may, perhaps, afford the means of 

 conciliating the principles of the art with as much as is well grounded in 

 the doctrines and objections of its assailants. 



The same abstinence from details could not be observe 

 Book, on Names and Propositions ; because many useful pjf^jnples and l^is^ 



