enough. Often is Aristotle denounced in language borrowed from himself, and the Schoolmen are disparaged by those who are all the while using distinctions which they have cut with sharp chisel in the rock, never to be effaced. There are persons speaking with contempt of Plato, Descartes, Locke, and all the metaphysicians who are taking advantage of the great truths which they have discovered. I could easily show that in our very sermons from the pulpit, and orations in the senate, and pleadings at the bar, principles are ever and anon appealed to which have come from the heads of our deepest thinkers, in ages long gone by, and who may now be forgotten by all but a few antiquarians in philosophy. Natural science itself is, in the hands of its most advanced votaries, ever touching on the borders of metaphysics, and compelling our physicists to rest on certain fundamental convictions as to extension and force. The truth is, in very proportion as material science advances, do thinking minds feel the need of something to go down deeper and mount up higher than the senses can do—of some means of settling those anxious questions which the mind is ever putting in regard to the soul, and the relation of the universe to God, and of a foundation on which the understanding can ultimately and confidently repose. Whatever the superficial may think, philosophy is an underlying power, of vast importance because of mighty influence. It is because it is fundamental and radical, that it is unseen by the vulgar, who notice only what is above the surface. Let us see that the foundation be well laid, that the root be properly planted. That foundation must be secure which is founded in our mental constitution; that is the proper root which is planted by our Maker.

In determining the precise nature of the mental intuitions, we may hope to be able to settle what they can do, and, as no less important, what they cannot do. Thus do

I hope to contribute my little aid in elevating the low, and in bringing down the presumptuous tendencies of the age; thus would I raise the downward, and at the same time lower the proud look; thus would I keep men from poring ever on the dust of the earth on the one hand, and on the other hand from attempting, Icarus-like, to mount in a flight which must issue in a lamentable fall. Thus would I seek to raise the view-position of some reckoned by themselves and others the wiser and more sober, who are digging for ever in the mere clay of material existence, and who, believing in nothing but what can be seen and touched, never rise to the contemplation of moral and spiritual, of immutable and eternal truth; and thus too would I save the more promising of our intellectual youths from falling under the power of a boasting à priori intuitionalism, which is alluring them on by gilded clouds, which will turn out to be damp and chill after they have taken infinite pains to climb to them and to enter them.

In Germany, in Britain, in the United States of America,-alas! France, with its finest minds ground down by a military despotism necessitated by an unprincipled democracy, has ceased to be a country of independent thought, and so cannot be named in such a connection, —thought is in a transition, and therefore a very restless state. In Germany, the high transcendental, intuitional, or dialectic method, has wrought itself out-has cropped out to the surface in thinness and brittleness; and in the reaction, eminent professors are lecturing to half-empty benches; and books which if published twenty years ago would have moved thought to its greatest depths, can now find little sale, few readers, and scarcely any believers; while in the absence of a judicious philosophy, accepted and influential, a plausible materialism, acknowledging no existence but matter and force, is making consider

able progress on the pretence of furnishing what the old metaphysics never yielded, something tangible and therefore solid. In the English-speaking nations there coexists with the old experiential spirit engendered by Locke, and the sensational spirit imported from France, a determined recoil, especially among certain musing and impulsive youths, against Lockism, and sensationalism, and the bony and haggard forms of physicism, which have become denuded of all truth, intellectual, moral, and religious, transcending sense and experience; and there is strong tendency towards an idealism, which, all decked and radiant, is seeking to win them to its embrace. It is surely possible that there may be some disturbed by the din of these controversies, and shunning both extremes, who may be prepared to welcome an attempt to discover—not, certainly, all truth (which is precluded to the human mind), but, by a sure method-that of observation and facts a sure foundation, laid by God himself, and on which other truths may be laid, and on which they may firmly rest.

I would not have taken such pains (as I can say conscientiously I have done) with this treatise, had I not been persuaded that it embodies important truth. At the same time I feel that in discussing so many and such abstruse topics, confusion and error may have crept in. My conviction indeed is very strong as to the accuracy of the general views unfolded in the First and Third of the three Parts into which the work is divided. There is more room for doubt and hesitation as to the discussions on the more particular topics in the Second Part. In regard to these, I would not only give-what indeed I know I cannot withhold-full freedom to others to differ from me, but I reserve to myself the right to improve, to modify, to correct, if need be, the views here set forth, should I receive new light on further reading and reflec

tion. I make this admission and claim this prerogative the more readily, as in doing so I may be in the better position to maintain that oversights and errors in these details will not be found after all to affect the general principles expounded in this volume, and their application to every form of speculation, philosophic and religious.

Note.-In thinking out this Work, I have made free but not unacknowledged use of the works of the great thinkers, both of ancient and modern times, both of the Continent and of Britain, who have pondered on these topics. Among later metaphysicians I have specially to acknowledge my obligations to the erudition, the unsurpassed logical power, and the profound observation, of the late Sir William Hamilton. I have also derived advantage, in the discussion of certain points, from the writings of living authors, British and Continental, who will be quoted or referred to at the proper places. In making this acknowledgment, I do not profess to belong to the school of any eminent man of the past or present, nor to any school, except the one which will attend to nothing but facts. I claim to have so far caught the spirit of those who have gone before, as to be resolute to maintain my independence, and I have not scrupled to state wherein I differ from those whose writings have yielded me the most valuable thoughts and suggestions. I have so constructed the work as to put incidental discussions and criticisms in Chapters and Sections, Preliminary and Supplemental, printed in smaller type.