Of the Conduct of the Understanding

'■o/essor of Logic in the Unii'ersity of Oxford; Fello7v of Lincoln College AT THE CLARENDON PRESS i MDCCCLXXXI [ All rights resetted ] PREFACE. Locke's tract or rather chapter ' Of the Conduct of the Understanding,' though often praised, and occasionally republished in a separate form, has never been edited with notes. It is thought that such assistance as is offered to the student in this edition may cause it to be more widely read and more generally useful. The testimony accorded to this book by Hallam, in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe, may fittingly occupy a position in its editor's preface : — 'I cannot think any parent or instructor justified in neglecting to put this little treatise in the hands of a boy about the time when the reasoning faculties become developed. It will give him a sober and serious, not flippant or self-conceited, independency of thinking ; and, while it teaches how to distrust ourselves and to watch those prejudices which necessarily grow up from one cause or another, will inspire a reasonable confidence in what he has well considered, by taking off a little of that deference to authority which is the more to be regretted in its excess that, like its cousin-german, party-spirit, it is frequently united to loyalty of heart and the generous enthusiasm of youth,' VI PREFACE. The treatise is unrevised and incomplete, but these circumstances (the reasons of which are explained in the Introduction) only slightly affect its value to the student. It may be remarked that the punctuation of the original edition, which seems to have been made almost entirely at hap-hazard, has been revised throughout by the present editor.