ADVERTISEMENT.

THE state of my health having interrupted, for many months past, the continuation of my work on the Human Mind, I was induced to attempt, in the mean time, the easier task of preparing for the press a volume of Essays. I have not, however, abandoned the design which I ventured to announce eighteen years ago; and in the execution of which I have already made considerable progress. After thirty-eight years devoted to the various pursuits connected with my different academical situations, I now indulge the hope of enjoying, in a more retired scene, a short period of private study; and feel myself sufficiently warned, by the approaching infirmities of age, not to delay any longer my best exertions for the accomplishment of an undertaking, which I have hitherto prosecuted only at accidental and often distant intervals; but which I have always fondly imagined (whether justly or not others must determine) might, if carried into complete effect, be of some utility to the public.

KINNEIL HOUSE, 15'h June 1810.

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.

CHAPTER I.

[SOME ERRORS Relative to the PHILOSOPHY OF mind corrected.]

THE chief aim of the following Dissertation is, to correct some prevailing mistakes with respect to the Philosophy of the Human Mind. In the Introduction to a former work,* I have enlarged at considerable length upon the same subject; but various publications which have since appeared, incline me to think, that in resuming it here, I undertake a task not altogether superfluous.

Of the remarks which I am now to state, a few have a particular reference to the contents of this volume. Others are intended to clear the way for a different series of discussions, which I hope to be able, at some future period, to present to the public.

I. In the course of those speculations on the Mind, to which I have already referred, and with which I trust that my present readers are not altogether unacquainted, I have repeatedly had occasion to observe, that "as our notions both of Matter and of Mind are merely relative;-as we know the one only by such sensible qualities as Extension, Figure, and Solidity, and the other by such operations as Sensation, Thought, and Voli* [Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i.]

tion; we are certainly entitled to say, that Matter and Mind, considered as Objects of Human Study, are essentially different; the science of the former resting ultimately on phenomena exhibited to our senses, that of the latter on phenomena of which we are conscious. Instead, therefore, of objecting to the scheme of Materialism, that its conclusions are false, it would be more accurate to say, that its aim is unphilosophical. It proceeds on a misapprehension of the extent and the limits. of genuine science; the difficulty which it professes to remove being manifestly placed beyond the reach of our faculties. Surely, when we attempt to explain the nature of that principle, which feels, and thinks, and wills, by saying that it is a material substance, or that it is the result of material organization, we impose on ourselves by words; forgetting that Matter, as well as Mind, is known to us by its qualities alone, and that we are equally ignorant of the essence of either."*

In the farther prosecution of the same argument, I have attempted to shew, that the legitimate province of this department of philosophy extends no farther than to conclusions resting on the solid basis of Observation and Experiment; and I have, accordingly, in my own inquiries, aimed at nothing more than to ascertain, in the first place, the Laws of our Constitution, as far as they can be discovered by attention to the subjects of our consciousness; and afterwards to apply these laws as principles for the synthetical explanation of the more complicated phenomena of the Understanding. It is on this plan that I have treated of the Association of Ideas, of Memory, of Imagination, and of various other intellectual powers; imitating, as far as I was able in my reasonings, the example of those who are allowed to have cultivated the study of Natural Philosophy with the greatest success. The Physiological Theories which profess to explain how our different mental operations are produced by means of vibrations, and other changes in the state of the sensorium, if they be not altogether hypothetical and visionary, cannot be considered, even by their warmest advocates, as resting on the same evidence with those conclu* [Supra, Elements, &c., vol. i. pp. 47, 48. (Works, vol. ii.)]