INTO THE RELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. BY THOMAS BROWN, M.D. F.R.S. EDIN. &c. PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY FOURTH EDITION. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN; W. TAIT, EDINBURGH; W. WAKEMAN, DUBLIN. MDCCCXXXV. Philos. Blackwell 9-14-27 15443 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE Essay which follows is now presented to the lovers of Metaphysical Disquisition in a form so much enlarged and altered, as to constitute almost a New Work. When originally written, with the view of giving some satisfaction to the public mind, on subject of obscure and difficult controversy, to which peculiar circumstances had attracted a very general interest, it was limited, as much as possible, to an examination of the theory on which the controversy had taken place. In the Second Edition, I ventured to take a wider range, and to add such reasonings and reflections, as seemed necessary to elucidate some of the questions of greatest difficulty, in the philosophy of Cause and Effect. At the same time, however, many questions relating to that most comprehensive of subjects, were left wholly unexamined, and some others only briefly noticed, which deserved a much fuller discussion, both from their own importance, and from the light which they throw on Physical Inquiry in general. In the present Edition, I have endeavoured to supply these deficiencies; and, with the hope of rendering more easily intelligible what has appeared intricate, as I conceive, chiefly because it has been long perplexed in the Schools, by a mysterious phraseology and the verbal inconsistencies of contending theorists, I have separated the view of the Philosophy of Causation, as a statement of simple philosophic truth, from the critical view of the doctrine of that bold and original Thinker, to whose ingenuity the abstract science of the connexion of the sequences of events has been principally indebted; and to the examination of whose opinions on the subject, as partly just and partly erroneous, the exposition of the abstract philosophy itself, which was treated before with constant reference to those opinions, might seem, in the former editions, to have been considered as subordinate. If, in that last portion of my Work, which is now devoted to the review of MR. HUME'S theory of our notion of Power, the criticism on his metaphysical style be less favourable, than the general opinion with respect to it, that has stamped it with a character of excellence, the justness of which it may now |