THIS book makes no pretence of giving to the
world a new theory of the intellectual operations.
Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded
on the fact that it is an attempt not to supersede, but
to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have
been either promulgated on its subject by speculative
writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their
scientific inquiries.

To cement together the detached fragments of a
subject, never yet treated as a whole; to harmonize
the true portions of discordant theories, by supplying
the links of thought necessary to connect them, and
by disentangling them from the errors with which
they are always more or less interwoven; must
necessarily require a considerable amount of original
speculation. To other originality than this, the pre-
sent work lays no claim. In the existing state of
the cultivation of the sciences, there would be a very
strong presumption against any one who should
imagine that he had effected a revolution in the
theory of the investigation of truth, or added any
fundamentally new process to the practice of it.
The improvement which remains to be effected in
the methods of philosophizing (and the author be-
lieves that they have much need of improvement)
can only consist in performing, more systematically

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