Elements Of The Philosophy Of The Human Mind

THE PHILOSOPHY THE HUMAN MIND, IN TWO PARTS, DUGALD STEWART, PROFESSOR Of MORAL PHILOSOPHY EDINBURGH, SECTIONAL HEADS, SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS AND TRANSLATIONS OF THE NUMEROUS GREEK, LATIN, AND FRENCH QUOTATIONS, c. THE. REV. G. N. WRIGHT, M. A., EDITOR OF THE WORKS Of BERKELEY, REID, ETC LONDON WILLIAM TEGG AND CO., 85, QUEEN STREET, CHEAPSIDE. 1853. PREFACE. AFTER an interval of more than twenty years, I venture to present to the public the second Part of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. When the first Part was sent to the press, I expected that a few short chapters would comprehend all that I had further to offer concerning the Intellectual Powers and that I should he able to employ the greater part of the second in examining those principles of our constitution, which are immediately connected with the Theory of Morals. On proceeding, however, to attempt an analysis of Reason, in the more strict acceptation of that term, 1 found so many doubts crowding on me with respect to the logical doctrines then generally received, that 1 was forced to abandon the comparatively limited plan according to which I had originally in tended to treat of the Understanding, and, in the meantime, to suspend the continuation of my work, till a more unbroken leisure should allow me to resume it with a less divided attention. Of the accidents which have since occurred to retard my progress, it is unnecessary to take any notice here. I allude to t n, merely as an apology for those defects of method, which are no natural, and perhaps the unavoidable consequences of the fiv interruptions by which the train of my thoughts has been r 1 . to other pursuits. Such of my readers as are able to, very large aproportion of my materials has been the toy The first part of The Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind as 1792, the second in 1814. IV PREFACE own meditations, and who are aware of the fugitive nature of our reasonings concerning phenomena so far removed from the perceptions of sense, will easily conceive the difficulty I must occasionally have experienced, in deciphering the short and slight hints on these topics, which I had committed to writing at remote periods of my life and still more, in recovering the thread which had at first connected them together in the order of my researches. I have repeatedly had occasion to regret the tendency of this intermittent and irregular mode of composition, to deprive my speculations of those advantages, in point of continuity, which, to the utmost of my power, I have endeavoured to give them. But I would willingly indulge the hope, that this is a blemish more likely to meet the eye of the author than of the reader and I am confident that the critic who shall honour me with a sufficient degree of attention, to detect it where it may occur, will not be inclined to treat it with undue severity. The circumstances which have so long delayed the publication of these reflections on the Intellectual Powers, have not operated, in an equal degree, to prevent the prosecution of my inquiries into those principles of Human Nature, to which my attention was, for many years, stately and forcibly called by my official duty. Much, indeed, still remains to be done in maturing, digesting, and arranging many of the doctrines which I was accustomed to intro duce into my lectures but if I shall be blessed, for a few years longer, with a moderate share ofhealth and of mental vigour, I do not altogether despair of yet contributing something, in the form of Essays, to fill up the outline which the sanguine imagination of youth encouraged me to conceive, before 1 had duly measured the magnitude of my undertaking with the time or with the abilities which I could devote to the execution...