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Newton. I have already introduced his name among the writers on Natural Law; but, in every other respect, ranks more fitly with the contemporaries of his old age than with those of his youth. My reasons for thinking so will appear in the sequel. In the mean time, it may suffice to remark, that Leibnitz, the Jurist, belongs to one century, and Leibnitz, the Philosopher, to another.

In this, and other analogous distributions of my materials, as well as in the order I have followed in the arrangement of particular facts, it may be proper, once for all, to observe, that much must necessarily be left to the discretionary, though not to the arbitrary decision of the author's judgment;-that the dates which separate from each other the different stages in the progress of Human Reason, do not, like those which occur in the history of the exact sciences, admit of being fixed with chronological and indisputable precision; while, in adjusting the perplexed rights of the innumerable claimants in this intellectual and shadowy region, a task is imposed on the writer, resembling not unfrequently the labor of him, who should have attempted to circumscribe, by mathematical lines, the melting and intermingling colors of Arachne's web;

"In quo diversi niteant cum mille colores,

Transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallit;

Usque adeo quod tangit idem est, tamen ultima distant."

But I will not add to the number (already too great) of the foregoing pages, by anticipating, and attempting to obviate, the criticisms to which they may be liable. Nor will I dissemble the confidence with which, amid a variety of doubts and misgivings, I look forward to the candid indulgence of those who are best fitted to appreciate the difficulties of my undertaking. I am certainly not prepared to say with Johnson, that "I dismiss my work with frigid indifference, and to me success and miscarriage are empty sounds." My feelings are more in unison with those expressed by the same writer in the conclusion of the admirable preface to his edition of Shakspeare. One of his reflections, more particularly, falls in so completely with the train of my own thougts,

that I cannot forbear, before laying down the pen, to offer it to the consideration of my readers.

"Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the public, expectations, which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done."

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ADVERTISEMENT.

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SOME apology, I am afraid, is necessary for the length to which this Dissertation is already extended. My original design (as is well known to my friends) was to comprise in ten or twelve sheets all the preliminary matter which I was to contribute to this SUPPLEMENT.* But my work grew insensibly under my hands, till it assumed a form which obliged me either to destroy all that I had written, or to continue my Historical Sketches on the same enlarged scale. In selecting the subjects on which I have chiefly dwelt, I have been guided by my own idea of their pre-eminent importance, when considered in connexion with the present state of Philosophy in Europe. On some, which I have passed over unnoticed, it was impossible for me to touch, without a readier access to public libraries than I can command in this retirement. The same circumstance will, I trust, account, in the opinion of candid readers, for various other omissions in my performance.

The time unavoidably spent in consulting, with critical care, the numerous authors referred to in this and in the former part of my Discourse, has encroached so deeply, and to myself so painfully, on the leisure which I had destined for a different purpose, that, at my advanced years, I can entertain but a very faint expectation (though I do not altogether abandon the hope) of finishing my intended

* Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

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