NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT
MR. CABOT, in his prefatory note to the volume named as above, the material for which he collected and edited in 1893, said of Mr. Emerson, "He had, from his early youth, cherished the project of a new method in metaphysics, proceeding by observation of the mental facts, without attempting an analysis and coördination of them, which must, from the nature of the case, be premature. With this view, he had, at intervals from 1848 to 1866, announced courses on the 'Natural History of Intellect,' 'The Natural Method of Mental Philosophy' and 'Philosophy for the People.' He would, he said, give anecdotes of the spirit, a calendar of mental moods, without any pretence of system.
"None of these attempts, however, disclosed any novelty of method, or indeed, after the opening statement of his intention, any marked difference from his ordinary lectures. He had always been writing anecdotes of the spirit, and those which he wrote under this heading were used by him in subsequently published essays so largely that I find very little left for present publication. The lecture which gives its name to the volume ["Natural History of Intellect"] was the first of the earliest course [at Harvard University], and it seems to me to include all that distinctly belongs to the particular subject."
In an old note-book, perhaps of 1835, is an endeavor by Mr. Emerson to write down some of the laws of "The First Philosophy, by which is meant the original laws of the mind." There is in English Traits (page 240) a passage from which