THE SELECT WORKS OF GEORGE COMBE.

ISSUED BY AUTHORITY OF THE COMBE TRUSTEES.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

THE SELECT WORKS OF GEORGE COMBE.

THE SERIES INCLUDES:

The Constitution of Man.

Moral Philosophy.

Science and Religion.

Discussions on Education.

&c.

&c.

THE

CONSTITUTION OF MAN

IN RELATION TO

THE NATURAL LAWS.

BY

GEORGE COMBE.

"Vain is the ridicule with which one foresees some persons will divert
themselves upon finding lesser pains considered as instances of Divine
punishment. There is no possibility of answering or evading the general
thing here intended, without denying all final causes."
."-BUTLER'S Analogy.

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED:
LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE.

THE CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

GEORGE COMBE died on the 14th of August, 1858, leaving to his Trustees the care of his Works.

The first edition of this treatise appeared in 1828. The edition which the author last revised for the press was the eighth (post 8vo, 1847); but the alterations then made were never transferred by him to the "People's Edition" (in royal 8vo), which had previously been stereotyped for the second time in 1841, and impressions of which continued to be frequently thrown off till the end of 1858. A few months before his death he began to prepare the Work for a final edition, which he had long been hoping to publish. Unhappily, he had proceeded but a short way with this revision when he died.

In preparing the present edition, the Editor has, with the approval of the Trustees, made such alterations on the Work as the lapse of time and the progress of knowledge have rendered necessary, or as were evidently requisite to harmonise it with the views propounded in his latest Work-"On the Relation between Science and Religion."

The central idea of the Treatise is independent of the system of Phrenology, with which the author's name is usually associated. That idea is that the Laws of Nature have been instituted by an omnipotent, all-just,