| Summary: | "These lectures (delivered before the Lowell Institute in Boston), though in part an extension of principles already presented by us to the public, we have thought it well to publish, both as developing the central doctrines of our intellectual constitution in new directions, and as more firmly establishing them in old ones. It may not be unserviceable to the hasty critic, nor unwelcome to the patient reader, to indicate at once the points in this discussion most important. We start with philosophy, seeking in the mind itself those ideas by means of which it groups and explains the facts of the physical and the spiritual world. The close of the second lecture presents a tabular arrangement of primitive notions, which contains the key of the method adopted. This presentation contains new features; and, if at the same time it be just, the fields of science, philosophy and religion are at once defined by it, and the grounds of controversy greatly narrowed. Science and philosophy, starting with certain common ideas, take up each of them distinguishing notions, and, moving along independent lines of inquiry, meet again in religion. The plan of the lectures and their merit, whatever this may be, centre here, and are commended to unsparing, yet fair and searching, criticism. If these lectures shall serve, even by a little, to deepen our impression of our powers, and our sense of hope in their handling, a chief object will be reached. We believe in the unspeakable elevation of our spiritual nature, and are willing often to shift the view, if so be, through clouds and mists, we may catch some more distinct prospect of those heights on which it is our earliest and latest effort to plant the feet of men"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).
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