A SYSTEM OF INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY. BY REV. ASA MAHAN, FIRST PRESIDENT OF CLEVELAND UNIVERSITY "How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, REVISED AND ENLARGED FROM THE SECOND EDITION. NEW YORK: A. S. BARNES & CO., 51 JOHN-STREET. CINCINNATI:-H. W. DERBY. 1854. ~13 OLOGY EDUC PSYCH. LIBRARY 57260 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by ASA MAHAN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of the State of New York. WILLIAM H. SHAIN & CO., STEREOTYPERS, HUDSON, OHIO. DEDICATORY PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following Treatise presents the sum of a course of Lectures, which, for six or eight years past, I have been in the habit of delivering to successive classes, on the subject of Intellectual Philosophy. One thing I may say in relation to this subject, without boasting. No class have yet passed through this course, without becoming deeply interested in the science of Mental Philosophy; and, in their judgment, receiving great benefit from the truths developed, as well as from the method of development which was adopted. Hence the desire has been very generally expressed by those who have attended the course of instruction, as well as by others who have become acquainted with the general features of the system taught, to have it presented to the public in a form adapted to popular reading. In conformity to such suggestions, as well as the permanent convictions of my own mind, the following Treatise has been prepared. In preparing it, it has been my aim to reject light from no source whatever from which it could be obtained, and at the same time to maintain the real prerogative of manly independence of thought. The individuals to whom I feel most indebted as a philosopher, are Coleridge, Cousin, and Kant-three luminaries of the first order in the sphere of philosophy. How far proper discrimi |