BEGINNINGS OF A NEW SCHOOL OF METAPHYSICS: THREE ESSAYS IN ONE VOLUME: OUTLINE OF SEMATOLOGY.-MDCCCXXXI. SEQUEL TO SEMATOLOGY.-MDCCCXXXVII. AN APPENDIX.-MDCCCXXXIX. BY B. H. SMART. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. MDCCCXLII. ADVERTISEMENT. I NEED not encumber this volume with a preface: the ensuing advertisement to the first Essay, and the introductory sections of the second and third, will explain the circumstances under which the work has been written, and the parts brought together; while the pretensions on which the title for the whole volume has been assumed, will be found briefly stated in the concluding section of the Appendix.-Might I advise, I would recommend that the third Essay, or Appendix, which sums up, corrects, and explains the others, should be cursorily examined, before reading the whole Volume. THE ADVERTISEMENT TO THE OUTLINE OF SEMATOLOGY, WHEN PUBLISHED IN 1831. I PUT not my name to these pages, nor shall I, beyond this notice, speak in the first person singular, but assume the pomp and circumstance of the editorial "We." Why I choose for the present to remain unknown, I leave the reader to settle as his fancy pleases. He is at liberty to think, that being of no note or reputation, and fearing for my book the fate of George Primrose's Paradoxes, I do not place my name in the title-page, because it would inevitably make that fate more certain. Or, if he chooses, he may imagine a better motive. He may suppose me to be the celebrated author of ******, with half the alphabet in capitals at the end of my name; and that I prefer an incognito, lest he, my "courteous reader," should relax the rigour of examination, and receive as true, on the authority of a name, a theory that may be false. |