| Summary: | "It is the design, in the present work, to represent the human mind as it stands in the clear light of consciousness. We go to our own inward experience to find the facts, both of the single mental phenomena and of their connection with each other. An Empirical Philosophy is here alone attempted, and in which we can not proceed according to the order of a pure science. The necessary and universal Ideas, which must determine all mental activity in every capacity, in order that these capacities may become intelligible to us in their conditional laws of operation, are not now first assumed, and then carried forward to a completed system by a rigid a priori analysis and deduction in pure thought. Such a work has already been accomplished in a thoroughly Rational Psychology. The subjective Idea which must condition and expound all Intelligence has been attained, and then the objective Law which controls all the facts of an acting Intelligence has been determined to be in exact accordance. But in this work we wait upon experience altogether. We use no fact, and no combination of facts, except as they have already been attained in the common, consciousness of humanity. It is rather a description of the human mind than a philosophy of it; a psycography rather than a psychology; and should not assume for itself the prerogatives of an exact science"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).
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