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TO
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
my great joy I have lived to revise even this little
work, after a lapse of nineteen years, and that joy is
enhanced by the special importance of this treatise for my
philosophy. For, starting from the purely empirical, from
the observations of unbiassed physical investigators
themselves following the clue of their own special sciences
I here immediately arrive at the very kernel of my Meta-
physic ; I establish its points of contact with the physical
sciences and thus corroborate my fundamental dogma, in
a sense, as the arithmetician proves a sum : for by this I
not only confirm it more closely and specially, but even
make it more clearly, easily, and rightly understood than
anywhere else.
The improvements in this new edition are confined almost
entirely to the Additions ; for scarcely anything that is
worth mentioning in the First Edition has been left out,
while I have inserted
new passages.
many and, in some cases, important
as a
But, even in a general sense, it may be looked upon
good sign, that a new edition of the present treatise should
since it shows that there is an
have been found necessary ;
interest in serious philosophy and confirms the fact that
the necessity for real progress in this direction is now more
strongly felt than ever. This is based upon two circum
stances. The first is the unparalleled zeal and activity
displayed in every branch of Natural Science o
which, as