To the Right Honourable

PHILIP Lord HARDWICKE,

Lord High Chancellor of Great-
Britain.*

My Lord,

As no one has
has exercised the
Powers of Speech with juster and
more universal applause, than your-
self; I have presumed to inscribe
the following Treatise to your Lord-
ship, its End being to investigate
the Principles of those Powers. It
has a farther claim to your Lord-
ship's Patronage, by being connect-
ed in some degree with that politer
Literature, which, in the most im-
portant scenes of Business, you

*The above Dedication is printed as it originally stood, the Author being desirous that what he intended. as a real Respect to the noble Lord, when living, should now be considered, as a Testimony of Gratitude to his Memory.

iii

have still found time to cultivate. With regard to myself, if what I have written be the fruits of that Security and Leisure, obtained by living under a mild and free Government; to whom for this am I more indebted, than to your Lordship, whether I consider you as a Legislator, or as a Magistrate, the first both in dignity and reputation? Permit me therefore thus publicly to assure your Lordship, that with the greatest gratitude and respect I am, My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obliged,

and most obedient humble Servant,

Close of Salisbury,

Oct. 1, 1751.

James Harris.

PREFACE.

THE chief End proposed by the Author of this Treatise in making it public, has been to excite his Readers to curiosity and inquiry; not to teach them himself by prolix and formal Lectures, (from the efficacy of which he has little expectation) but to induce them, if possible, to become Teachers to themselves, by an impartial use of their own understandings. He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes. The growth of Knowledge he rather thinks to resemble the growth of Fruit; however external causes may in some degree cooperate, it is the internal vigour, and vir

tue of the tree, that must ripen the juices to their just maturity.

This then, namely, the exciting men to inquire for themselves into subjects worthy of their contemplation, this the Author declares to have been his first and principal motive for appearing in print. Next to that, as he has always been a lover of Letters, he would willingly approve his studies to the liberal and ingenuous. He has particularly named these, in distinction to others; because, as his studies were never prosecuted with the least regard to lucre, so they are no way calculated for any lucrative End. The liberal therefore and ingenuous (whom he has mentioned already) are those, to whose perusal he offers what he has written. Should they judge favourably of his attempt, he may not perhaps hesitate to confess,

Hoc juvat et melli est.-

For