or proof of spirits. If any one take the like offence at the entrance of
this Treatise, I shall desire him to read it through; and then I hope he
will be convinced, that the taking away false foundations is not to the
prejudice but advantage of truth, which is never injured or endangered
so much as when mixed with, or built on, falsehood. In the Second
Edition I added as followeth:--

The bookseller will not forgive me if I say nothing of this New Edition,
which he has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends for
the many faults committed in the former. He desires too, that it should
be known that it has one whole new chapter concerning Identity, and many
additions and amendments in other places. These I must inform my reader
are not all new matter, but most of them either further confirmation of
what I had said, or explications, to prevent others being mistaken in
the sense of what was formerly printed, and not any variation in me from
it.

I must only except the alterations I have made in Book II. chap. xxi.

What I had there written concerning Liberty and the Will, I thought
deserved as accurate a view as I am capable of; those subjects having
in all ages exercised the learned part of the world with questions and
difficulties, that have not a little perplexed morality and divinity,
those parts of knowledge that men are most concerned to be clear in.
Upon a closer inspection into the working of men's minds, and a stricter
examination of those motives and views they are turned by, I have found
reason somewhat to alter the thoughts I formerly had concerning that
which gives the last determination to the Will in all voluntary actions.
This I cannot forbear to acknowledge to the world with as much freedom
and readiness; as I at first published what then seemed to me to be