AND TRACTS, BEING A SERIES OF INFERENCES, DEDUCED CHIEFLY FROM THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOST CONTAINING I. OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOUNDATION OF MORALS IN HUMAN NATURE; OF NATURE. AND AN APPENDIX OF TWO DISSERTATIONS, CONTAINING SOME REMARKS ON THE QUESTION OF MATERIALISM, AND THE PRESENT A BRIEF REVIEW OF HUME'S NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION. WITH NOTES UPON VARIOUS INCIDENTAL SUBJECTS, BY HENRY O'CONNOR, Esq., BARRISTER AT LAW. Ratio eorum qui acatalepsiam tenuerint, et via nostra, initiis suis quodam- The same principles which at first view lead to scepticism, pursued to a DUBLIN: HODGES AND SMITH, COLLEGE-GREEN; WHITTAKER & CO., LONDON; AND ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, EDINBURGH. M.DCCC.XXXVII. TO THE REV. JAMES THOMAS O'BRIEN, D. D., ARCHBISHOP KING'S LECTURER IN DIVINITY, AND EX-FELLOW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, ETC. ETC. It ought not to be a matter of surprise to any one that the following pages should be dedicated to you. They contain, indeed, much which I do not expect that you will approve; they assert some positions, which, perhaps, no arguments of mine may be adequate to establish fully in your opinion, and they are liable to just censure for many defects of which I am myself not unconscious, and which it may require a candid, or even a friendly eye, to overlook. But, inasmuch as the arguments, which you may not think to be sufficiently conclusive, are upon subjects whereof doubts may well be entertained,—and inasmuch as the faults, which cannot escape your observation, are rather in the style and method of these Essays, than in their moral tendency or reasoning,—above all, inasmuch as they effectually maintain, to the best of the author's ability, the |