GRR3 4-26-38 211 PREFACE. The re No part of the present work has been previously published. This is by no means the first occasion on which the lectures of a Scottish professor of philosophy have been given to the world. The lectures of Thomas Brown, of Sir William Hamilton, and of James Frederick Ferrier, have been recognised as of permanent value. In the range and accuracy of his learning Professor Adamson was probably at least Hamilton's equal; and in his own thinking he was as little swayed by the authority of any great name as was Brown or Ferrier. His reputation as a lecturer, too, made it only a natural desire that some permanent record should be preserved of the philosophical teaching brought to a close by his untimely death. But it was not altogether a surprise to me, on examining his manuscripts, to find that there was no scrap of his handwriting bearing on his work as a Scottish professor. Earlier notes, dating from his Manchester days, there were in plenty, and even some written courses of lectures; but the results of his mature thinking had not been committed to paper by himself. He had long given up the traditional method of reading his lectures. Any books from which he purposed quoting he brought with him into the lecture-room. He had seldom any notes; and, when he had any, as often as not he would not refer to them. But the whole course had always been thoroughly thought out, and each portion of it was carefully prepared. The literary form. into which it fell was determined by the sequence of his thought; and long practice had made him a master of the rare art of slow, consecutive, and lucid speech. His method was not conversational but systematic; and what he said could not be fully appreciated unless written out and considered at leisure. Many volumes of students' notes have come into my hands, containing a considerable number of different courses of lectures delivered in successive years. And those courses which seemed to me to contain the best results of his teaching and the maturest expression of his own philosophical views, have also, by a fortunate accident, been most fully reported. They were taken down by a rapid writer who found that he was able, as a rule, to preserve all that was said by writing only the first few letters of longer words, leaving a blank which he filled up as soon as he got home, and when the lecture was still fresh in his mind. This set of notes, which is taken as the basis of the present work, has had its accuracy tested by comparison with other notes of the same courses; and in some few cases it has been corrected by them. It has of course been carefully revised; but it may be not without interest to state that the manuscript written in the lecture-room was used as copy for the printer. The history of the Development of Modern Philosophy, which forms the first volume, consists of two courses of lectures, the one a general sketch of the history of modern philosophy, given in the session 1897-98; the other a course on the philosophy of Kant, given in the session 1898-99. With a few transferences and omissions, rendered necessary by the overlapping of the two courses, the former is to be found in the first, second, and fourth parts into which the volume is divided, the latter in its third and fifth parts. The Principles of Psychology, contained in the second volume, consists of two shorter courses of lectures given in the same years: that on the Psychology of Thinking in 1897-98, that on the General Analysis of Mind in 1898-99. The consecutiveness of the author's exposition takes no account of the division into lectures. Accordingly that division has not been retained; and for the division into parts, chapters, &c., which has been adopted, as well as for the titles given to these divisions, I am alone responsible. I have also added footnotes (marked by square brackets), giving references to the passages of books on which the author appeared to be relying. On a few important points quota tions have been added, those from foreign writers being in all cases rendered into English. These notes have been inserted in the hope of making the book more useful to students. But they do not aim at completeness; and in particular, it has not been thought desirable to increase the bulk of the work by giving references when the exposition follows fairly closely the order of a particular book—as in most of the chapters on Kant. I am also responsible for the selection of material to be published both from the author's own manuscripts and from among the courses of lectures represented by students' notes: except as regards the two lectures on the Regeneration of Germany, which are included on the recommendation of Professor Adamson's old friend Dr A. W. Ward, Master of Peterhouse, who has also been kind enough to undertake the work of preparing them for publication. The proof-sheets have been read by Dr G. F. Stout, Mr J. H. Lobban, and Mr Norman Smith; and the work owes much to their careful revision. The index has been compiled by Mr Lobban. Thanks are also due to Mr H. R. Buchanan, and other old students of Professor Adamson's, for the material which they placed at my disposal. W. R. SORLEY. CAMBRIDGE, February 1903. |