"The following Lectures on Metaphysics constitute the first portion of the Biennial Course which the lamented Author was in the habit of delivering during the period of his occupation of the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics, in the University of Edinburgh. giving these Lectures to the world, it is due, both to the Author and to his readers, to acknowledge that they do not appear in that state of completeness which might have been expected, had they been prepared for publication by the Author himself As Lectures on Metaphysics--whether that term be taken in its wider or its stricter sense--they are confessedly imperfect. The Author himself, adopting the Kantian division of the mental faculties into those of Knowledge, Feeling, and Conation, considers the Philosophy of Mind as comprehending, in relation to each of these, the three great subdivisions of Psychology, or the Science of the Phenomena of Mind; Nomology, or the Science of its Laws; and Ontology, or the Science of Results and Inferences. The term Metaphysics, in its strictest sense, is synonymous with the last of these subdivisions; while, in its widest sense, it may be regarded as including the first also--the second being, in practice at least, if not in scientific accuracy, usually distributed among other departments of Philosophy. The following Lectures cannot be considered as embracing the whole province of Metaphysics in either of the above senses. Among the Phenomena of Mind, the Cognitive Faculties are discussed fully and satisfactorily; those of Feeling are treated with less detail; those of Conation receive scarcely any special consideration; while the questions of Ontology, or Metaphysics proper, are touched upon only incidentally. The omission of any special discussion of this last branch may perhaps be justified by its abstruse character, and unsuitableness for a course of elementary instruction; but it is especially to be regretted, both on account of the general neglect of this branch of study by the entire school of Scottish philosophers, and also on account of the eminent qualifications which the Author possessed for supplying this acknowledged deficiency. A treatise on Ontology from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, embodying the final results of the Philosophy of the Conditioned, would have been a boon to the philosophical world such as probably no writer now living is capable of conferring." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)