Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary - Faculty of Social Sciences

ADVERTISEMENT.MOST of the principles, and reasonings, contained in thisvolume, were published in a work in three volumes, calledA Treatise of Human Natzcre : A work which the Autllor hadprojected before he left College, and which he wrote andpublished not long after. But not finding it successful, hewas sensible of his error in going to the press tco early, andhe cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where somenegligences in his former reasoning and more irl the expression,are, he hopes, corrected. Yet several writers, who havehonoured the Author's Philosophy with answers, have takencare to direct all their batteries agaiust the juvenile work,which the Author never acknowledged, and have affected totriumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they hadobtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules ofcandour and hir-dealing, and a strong instance of thosepolemical artifices, which a bigotted zeal thinks itself axthorisedto employ. Henceforth, the Autllor desires, that thefollowing Pieces may alone be regarded as containing hisphilosophical sentiments and princip1es.l1 [For the history of this Advertisement, which was first published in the secondvolume of tho posthumoas Edition of 1777, see Vol. 111. p. 38.-Ed.]