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Religious studies

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Classical literature. --- Hamilton, William,

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The present volume differs only in a few verbal corrections from the article "Metaphysics," as originally published in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In estimating its character, with reference both to what it omits and to what it attempts to perform, it will be necessary to bear in mind that it is but a reprint of an article written under specified conditions, as a portion of a larger work, and not as an independent treatise. The plan of the article, embracing Metaphysics in the most comprehensive sense, together with the limited space allotted to its execution, rendered it necessary to attempt a general outline of a wide and in some degree ambiguous subject, which, in some respects, might perhaps have been more satisfactorily discussed by means of separate treatises on its subordinate parts. Some matters have thus been entirely omitted, and others very cursorily touched upon, which, under other circumstances, might have had a claim to insertion or fuller treatment. Thus, with the exception of some very slight notices of the modern German philosophy, no attempt has been made to furnish any historical account of the progress and various phases of metaphysical speculation; a task which, as far as the Encyclopædia was concerned, had in a great measure been already performed in Stewart's Preliminary Dissertation; and which, besides, could not have been added to the present treatise without exceeding the reasonable limits of an article. And in what has actually been attempted, many important questions especially in the latter part of the work, have been indicated rather than discussed: some hints have been given to stimulate and direct further inquiry; but little has been done to satisfy it. Some of these deficiencies it would probably be out of my power to remedy; others, which I would gladly have attempted to supply, had I had leisure and opportunity for a complete revision, must at any rate be left as they are for the present. Nevertheless, though fully conscious of the imperfections of the work, I venture to hope that it may be of some service in giving English readers a clearer apprehension of a subject which, in this country, has been much neglected and misunderstood, and which, into, whatever errors and extravagances it may at times have fallen, yet has its foundation in some of the deepest needs of human nature, and its superstructure in some of the noblest monuments of human thought.

Metaphysics. --- Consciousness.

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