CONSTITUTION OF MAN CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO EXTERNAL OBJECTS BY GEORGE COMBE. "Vain is the ridicule with which one sees some persons will divert them FIFTH AMERICAN EDITION, MATERIALLY REVISED AND ENLARGED. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY BAZIN & ELLSWORTH, Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1335, by MARSH CAPEN & LYON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Dis trict of Massachusetts. PRINTED BY GEORGE C. RAND & AVERT. PREFACE. THIS Essay would not have been presented to the Public, had I not believed that it contains views of the constitution, condition, and prospects of Man, which deserve attention; but these, I trust, are not ushered forth with any thing approaching to a presumptuous spirit. I lay no claim to originality of conception. My first notions of the natural laws were derived from a manuscript work of Dr. Spurzheim, with the perusal of which I was honored in 1824. This work was afterwards published under the title of 'A Sketch of the Natural Laws of Man, by G. Spurzheim, M. D.' A comparison of the text of it with that of the following pages, will show to what extent I am indebted to my late excellent and lamented master and friend for my ideas on this subject. All my inquiries and meditations since have impressed me more and more with a conviction of their importance. The materials employed lie open to all. Taken separately, I would hardly say that a new truth has been presented in the following work. The parts have all been admitted and employed again and again, by writers on morals, from Socrates down to the present day. In this respect, there is nothing new under the sun. The only novelty in this Essay respects the relations which acknowledged truths hold to each other. Physical laws of nature, affecting our physical condition, as well as regulating the whole material system of the universe, are universally acknowledged, and constitute the elements of natural philosophy and chemical science. Physiologists, medical practitioners, and all who take |