Excerpt from The True Philosophy of Mind This work I dedicate to the reader with the following requests: That he will look with an eye of sad regret and see where the Christian world is drifting. That he will have independence enough to know that he has a mind of his own, by which he can judge as well of its own operations as others can judge for him. That he will throw perplexing and unmeaning words aside, as worthless in thought; for brutes, and the deaf and dumb, feel, think, and act promptly and correctly without words. That he will read the history of his race and see that there is, at this time, more than a thousand human victims daily immolated upon the altars of a dark and sanguinary superstition, prescribed by an inhuman and domineering priesthood. That he will seriously meditate upon the fact that more than two thousand years of preaching, and of teaching the nature of mind, its duty to its fellow-man, and its relation to its God, has only served to divide the human family and make the science of mind more laborious and incomprehensible than ever. That he will keep constantly in view the cause of every thought and act of his life, which will soon give him a perfect and practical knowledge of mind, a boon that no closet-book of assumed and artistic minds can possibly give him. That he will be watchful of the artifice of authors and teachers in quibbling out of the influence of motives in the production of will and action by affirming as Haven, the great text-book writer, does, that motives, though the reason and occasion of will and action, are not the cause. With your mind thus fortified, read on, and you will find all the laws of mind fully developed, illustrated, and demonstrated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.