CONCERNING THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS, AND THE INVESTIGATION OF TRUTH. BY JOHN ABERCROMBIE, M.D. F.R.S. WITH ADDITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS TO ADAPT THE WORK TO THE BY JACOB ABBOTT. BOSTON: JOHN ALLEN & CO. PHILADELPHIA: ALEXANDER TOWER. 1835. HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by JACOB ABBOTT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED BY SHEPARD, OLIVER & CO. No. 3, Water Street. PREFACE. THE text of the following work, strictly speaking, is Dr. Abercrombie's treatise on the Human Mind, entire. In connection with this treatise, however, the original edition has two articles attached to it by the author, for the sole benefit of the class whom he was addressing, viz. a class of medical students. The first to which we refer is a history of the science of Intellectual Philosophy, prefixed to the work; the second, an admirable set of directions, to guide medical students in their professional inquiries. These treatises do not of necessity constitute a part of a treatise on the Philosophy of Mind. They are accordingly omitted in this edition. What, in the editor's opinion, constitutes the treatise itself, is published entire, without alterations or omissions, the editor holding his author's language sacred. The additions which have been made are intended, not to supply any supposed deficiencies in the original, but simply to adapt it to a purpose for which the book is, in the main, admirably suited: they are intended as nearly as was possible to be such additional explanations as the editor conceived the author would himself have made, had he have had in view, whilst preparing the book, the purpose to which it is now applied. The practice of studying such a work as this by formal questions, the answer to which pupils commit to memory, cannot be too severely censured. There seemed, however, |