DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA, to wit: BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the seventeenth day of October, in the forty-first year of the independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1816, JAMES OGILVIE, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following," to wit: Philosophical Essays; to which are subjoined, Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Supplementary Narrative; with an Appendix. In conformity to the act of Congress of the United States entitled, "An ́dot for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therem: mentioned." And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to an aet entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of. designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." DAVID CALDWELL, Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania. STOR LID AR 62f 27 1073 NEW Y PREFACE. NEARLY seven years have elapsed, since the Author of the contents of this volume, undertook a literary enterprise, of no ordinary magnitude and difficulty. In the prosecution of his design, he arrived a few months ago, at a stage somewhat critical: Farther success became worthless, or hopeless; without the acquisition of permanent and extended celebrity, as a philosophical writer. The views and motives, by which he was induced to undertake the execution of this enterprise, and the circumstances which brought him, (somewhat abruptly,) to the stage to which he now adverts; are fully explained and detailed in a Supplementary Narrative. He could not stand still: He would not recede, and therefore must go on. Whether that share of permanent and extended celebrity, which is essential to further success in the execution of this enterprise, be or be not, within his reach; will be determined by the reception of the volume, now offered to the public. Far from auguring a favourable reception as an author, from his success as a declaimer; he is fully aware, that this very success, is on several accounts unpropitious to the completion of the aspiring hopes, which he would gladly indulge. The eclat of popular declamation, on the Rostrum, depends upon so many circumstances wholly independent of superior capacity or cultivation; so many circumstances perfectly contemptible in the view of generous ambition; so many circumstances, compatible with mental imbecility, and even with depravity, in the characters of those who may obtain this eclat; that it would be difficult, even to imagine, a more equivocal or shallow evidence of personal merit, value, or virtue, than, (taken singly,) such success exhibits. Any thing, how superficial and sophistical soever in substance; however faulty, tumid, or meretricious in its style, if delivered with a certain degree of animation, energy, and grace; will often not only escape censure, but even extort a plaudit, from a miscellaneous audience. It ought to be recollected too, that the attempt, (in the incipient stages of the enterprise which he has undertaken,) to exhibit specimens of luminous analysis, or philosophical reasoning, on the Rostrum; would not only have been preposterous, but a whimsical kind of suicide. Any public speaker, however gifted by nature, or graced by culture, with the natural and acquired powers of oratory, who may make this attempt, in the early stages of such an enterprise; may begin by addressing a very numerous and fashionable audience, but will assuredly close his oration, if he speaks three-quarters of an hour, in the presence of a very select one. |