hat
they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge.
To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I
suppose, some service to human understanding; though so few are apt to
think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words; or that the
language of the sect they are of has any faults in it which ought to be
examined or corrected, that I hope I shall be pardoned if I have in the
Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it
so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the
prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not
take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the
significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

I have been told that a short Epitome of this Treatise, which was
printed in 1688, was by some condemned without reading, because INNATE
IDEAS were denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate
ideas were not supposed, there would be little left either of the notion
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 wor