The moral effect of early lessons being a point of the utmost importance, it is especially incumbent on all those who are endeavouring to confer the benefits of intellectual culture, to guard against the admission or the inculcation of any principle which may have an improper tendency, and be ultimately prejudicial to those whom they instruct.

In preparing this treatise for publication, the author has been solicitous to avoid every thing that could be offensive to the most delicate and scrupulous reader; and of the several thousands of quotations introduced for the illustration or application of the principles of the science, he trusts that the greater part will be considered valuable on account of the sentiments they contain.
35.

The nature of the subject almost entirely precludes invention.

The author has, however, aimed at that kind and degree of originality which are to be commended in works of this sort.

What these are, according to his view, he has sufficiently explained in a preceding chapter.