_ Whether this design
has been successfully or unsuccessfully executed, is left for the public
to decide. The general adoption of the work into schools, wherever it
has become known, and the ready sale of _forty thousand_ copies, (though
_without hitherto affording the author any pecuniary profit,_) are
favorable omens.
In the selection and arrangement of principles for his work, the author
has endeavored to pursue a course between the extremes, of taking
blindly on trust whatever has been sanctioned by prejudice and the
authority of venerable names, and of that arrogant, innovating spirit,
which sets at defiance all authority, and attempts to overthrow all
former systems, and convince the world that all true knowledge and
science are wrapped up in a crude system of vagaries of its own
invention. Notwithstanding the author is aware that public prejudice is
powerful, and that he who ventures much by way of innovation, will be
liable to defeat his own purpose by falling into neglect; yet he has
taken the liberty to think for himself, to investigate the subject
critically and dispassionately, and to adopt such principles only as he
deemed the least objectionable, and best calculated to effect the object
he had in view.
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