sentient. For the same reason, they have abstained from noticing such criticisms as have appeared on those portions of the work which have already been published in other forms. Their own annotations are, for the most part, confined to occasional explanations and verifications of the numerous references and allusions scattered through the text. The notes fall, as will be observed, into three classes: I. Original; notes printed from the manuscript of the present Lectures. These appear without any distinctive mark. Mere Jottings or Memoranda by the Author, made on the manuscript, are generally marked as such. To these are also added a few Oral Interpolations of the Author, made in the course of reading the Lectures, which have been recovered from the note-books of students. II. Supplied; notes extracted or compiled by the Editors from the Author's Common Place Book and fragmentary papers. These are enclosed in square brackets, and are without signature. III. Editorial; notes added by the Editors. These always bear the signature "ED." When added as supplementary to the original or supplied notes, they are generally enclosed in square brackets, besides having the usual signature. The Editors have been at pains to trace and examine the notes of the first and second classes with much care; and have succeeded in discovering the authorities referred to, with very few and insignificant exceptions. The Editors trust that the Original and Supplied Notes may prove of service to students of Philosophy, as indications of sources of philosophical opinions, which, in many cases, are but little, if at all, known in this country. The Appendix embraces a few papers, chiefly fragmentary, which appeared to the Editors to be deserving of publication. Several of these are fragments of discussions which the Author had written with a view to the Memoir of Mr. Dugald Stewart, on the editorship of whose works he was engaged at the period of his death. They thus possess the melancholy interest which attaches to the latest of his compositions. To these philosophical fragments have been added a few papers on physiological subjects. These consist of an extract from the Author's Lectures on Phrenology, and communications made by him to various medical publications. Apart from the value of their results, these physiological investigations serve to exhibit, in a department of inquiry foreign to the class of subjects with which the mind of the Author was ordinarily occupied, that habit of careful, accurate, and unsparing research, by which Sir William Hamilton was so eminently characterized. |