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 This will extend to Five Volumes. In the General Preface, to be given on its completion, the Editor will explain, at some length, the views by which he has been guided, in the arduous task of selecting and adjusting its Articles and Treatises; and he hopes, with some confidence, to be able to show, that to have confined the Work within narrower limits, would have materially interfered with every useful object proposed by its publication. In the meantime he may observe, that the same number of Supplementary Volumes was thought necessary to complete the French Encyclopédie,—a work planned, conducted, and written by the most eminent authors of the country which produced it.

The Dissertation prefixed to this Half-Volume forms the first of a series of similar Discourses, with one of which each Volume of the Work will commence; and whose object is, to exhibit a rapid view of the progress made since the Revival of Letters, first, in those branches of knowledge which relate to, and next, in those which relate to. In so far as regards the Philosophy of Mind, and its kindred branches, this historical sketch is brought down, in the present Dissertation, to the beginning of the last century; and the inquiry will be concluded in another Dissertation, to be prefixed to the Third Volume. The Second Volume will commence with a similar view of the progress of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, during the same period, by ; who will in like manner conclude the history of these sciences in another Discourse, to be given with the Fourth Volume. This series will be closed by a Dissertation on the History of Chemical Discovery, and Chemical Theory, by, to be prefixed to the Last Volume.

Of the particular merits of that portion of this historical survey with which the present Volume is enriched, this is not the place to speak; but of these Discourses generally, the Editor may here be permitted to observe, that they form a novel feature in the Encyclopædias of this Country; and, that every Encyclopædia must be in so far incomplete, which does not furnish a connected view of the Progress of the Sciences, as well as the details of their Present State.