Note 1 — Chapter XIV · SOME NAMES WHICH REQUIRE A PARTICULAR EXPLANATION.

Under the modest title of an explanation of the meaning of several names, this chapter presents us with a series of discussions of some of the deepest and most intricate questions in all metaphysics. Like Plato, the author introduces his analysis of the most obscure among the complex general conceptions of the human mind, in the form of an enquiry into the meaning of their names. The title of the chapter gives a very inadequate notion of the difficulty and importance of the speculations contained in it, and which make it, perhaps, the profoundest chapter of the book. It is almost as if a treatise on chemistry were described as an explanation of the names air, water, potass, sulphuric acid, &c.—Ed.