PREFACE.

XIX

human mind must have frequently seen exemplified,
 that the strongest powers of reasoning
are an insufficient security against gross error,
if unaccompanied by that incessant analysis of
terms and propositions, and that intense consciousness
 of intellectual operations, which
are the properties of a metaphysical genius,
Of this cast of intellect, the most striking
instance perhaps which our own times af.
ford is to be found in the writings of the late
Professor of Moral Philosophy in the university
 of Edinburgh, Dr. Thomas Brown; a man
who possessed, in an almost unrivalled degree,
the capacity of looking into the mechanism of
his own mind, and seeing the impalpable phenomena
 of thought and feeling, as well as the

power of flinging to a distance the embarrassing
influence. of words, and fixing his eye with
keen penetration on the things which they re-Presented,
 stripped of the covering of language,