FRAGMENT ON MACKINTOSH BEING STRICTURES ON SOME PASSAGES IN THE DISSERTATION ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA TO THE READER. I WROTE remarks on Sir James's Dissertation, when copies of it were first distributed to his friends; before it was regularly published, as one of the preliminary discourses of the Encyclopædia Britannica ;-induced to do so, by my belief, that the confusion into which he had thrown the science of Ethics was calculated to do great injury to the minds of such young inquirers as might resort to his work for instruction; and my fear that the puffing, on the part both of himself and his friends, which had so successfully served the author through life, and the reputation he thence enjoyed, would procure a temporary and unfortunate celebrity to a deleterious production. I had made my remarks in the form of letters to the author. And they were written with that severity of reprehension which the first feelings of indignation against an evil-doer inspire. From accidental circumstances the publication was delayed, till the death of Sir James. The form of letters to himself then appeared incon |