as failed to explain the nature of God
and the nature of man from any rational point of view." It has been
obliged to "recognize necessity as the universal law of life, and to
conceive the production of the phenomenal from the absolute,--therefore
of man from God; and also the production of the finite from the
infinite,--therefore of diversity from unity, of evil from good, and of
death from life; which is the greatest violation of rationality that can
possibly be supposed." But it is now time to state, or rather faintly to
adumbrate, the grand assumption of this singular work. There are held to
be two Spiritual Causes, whose union is the condition of all existence.
Each of these Causes, represented under the terms of Infinite and Finite
Law, are conceived to be threefold principles which act and operate
together as Death and Life. Neither the Infinite nor the Finite
Principle can obtain definite manifestation without the aid of the
other; but there is a capacity in the latter for becoming receptive and
productive from the former. And from this august union come all the
works of creation, where death is still made productive from life, evil
from good, the natural from the spiritual,--this last happy
productiveness never taking place by any development of the natural, but
only by means of a spiritual conception and birth. Every individual must
commence his existence as a dualistic substance necessarily discordant
and unreal. Through various appearances, representing an experience of
opposing spiritual laws, he reaches a position where true spiritual life
becomes possible through presentation to the consciousness of the
opposing Spiritual Laws already noticed. The solemn moment of choice,
when for the first and only time man can be said to be a free agent, has
now arrived. Affinities for the Laws of Death and Life are felt within
him. He may become productive from the Infinite for universal ends, or
from the Finite for those which are personal. He is saved or lost at his
own election.

Within the limits to which we are restricted, it is impossible to give
any account of the multiplex and abstruse details into which the system
is carried. The present volume contains an ontology constructed upon the
new basis. It shows varied study, and abounds in ponderous quotations
and laborious analyses. It will be profoundly interesting to the few who
are able to accept as axioms the teacher's assumptions, and to trace a
vigorous deduc