PREFACE, 



THIS book makes no pretence of giving to the 

 world a new theory of our 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 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 

 effected a revolution in the theory of the investi- 

 gation of truth, or added any fundamentally new 

 process to the practice of it. The improvement which 

 remains to be effected in methods of philosophiz- 

 ing (and the author believes that they have much 



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