BY THOMAS C. UPHAM,

PROFESSOR OF MESTAL AND MURAL PERLOSCHET IN BOWDOWN OLANGE

CALI

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE

B431

46385 1864.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, by THOMAS C. UPHAM, in the U. S. District Court, State of Maine, July 13th, 1861.

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PREFACE

THE Philosophy of the Mind has grown up, like other sciences, from small beginnings. Many propositions, coming too, in many instances, from able writers, have been thrown aside; truth has been sifted out from the mass of error, until at last & great number of important principles is ascertained. But while it is exceedingly necessary that our youth should be made acquainted with these principles, it is impossible that they should go through with all the complicated discussions which have been held in respect to them. Many of the books in which these discussions are contained have become exceedingly rare; and, if they were not so, no small number of students, who are now in the course of as thorough an education as our country affords, would not be able to purchase them. And besides, by placing before the student a mass of crude and conflicting statements, his mind becomes perplexed. To be able to resolve such a mass into its elements, and to separate truth from error, implies an acquaintance with the laws of the intellect, and a degree of mental discipline, which he is not yet supposed to have acquired; and hence, instead of obtaining much important knowledge, he becomes distrustful of everything

Now these evils, saying nothing of the loss of time at tendant on such a course, are to be remedied in the same way as in other sciences. In other departments of learning, ingenious men discuss points of difficulty; conflicting arguments are accumulated, until the preponderance on one side is such that the question in debate is considered