Excerpt from An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1 With regard to originality, the author makes very little pretension to anything of the kind. He has used very freely the Opinions and the argu ments of other people; seldom rejecting an appo site idea because it was to be found amongst the productions of some other mind. Should he only succeed in bringing great truths and principles before the attention of his fellow-men, he will not envy any one the first origination of them. If it may be now allowed him to lay down the stiffness of the third person, and assume the confidential ease of the first, he will detail as briefly as possible the train of circumstances, which has led to the present attempt, and the purpose he has had in view in making it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.