INTRODUCTION. THAT Truth is One, and that Philosophy must therefore be realized as Absolute Science, through the conception and application of the Universal Laws of Existence in its construction, in order that it should be legitimate, reliable, and permanent, has always been acknowledged; and the realization of this universal form has therefore been the principal object in all Ontological and Eclectical speculations. M. Chalybäus, in his "Historical Survey of Experimental Philosophy," says, "The chief business of human thought is, and must be, to discover and comprehend principle, means, and end, both in singular and in the whole. All three moments ought to be one or united; but they must also be distinguished, and, each in its own place, must necessarily be that to which, by this place, it is entitled or justified. To find the true formula for this relation, has been, as the whole history of Philosophy teaches us, the problem from Pythagoras down to Hegel incessantly has the human mind labored with this intention, and without having in itself a distinct consciousness of the fact, worked within the pale of this formula, in order to obtain possession of it for itself." Cicero recognized the necessity for this universal form, and defined Philosophy to be "The Science of things Divine, and of things Human." By Plato, "Absolute Science" was demanded as the condition of true knowledge, and was defined in the following words: "Absolute Science is the pure self-consciousness of the Reason, the conviction that it has of itself, which assures to every special science its value and right import, and is, at the same time, yersed in them all, and - combines into a whole their various branches. Its object is the eternal truth, the unchangeable, unborn, and imperishable,of which all that can be truly said is, that IT is. This eternal and unchangeable being we call God." A demand for Absolute Science has been made in all Ontological systems, because Ontology is "The Science of Being," and it must therefore attempt to define the nature of Absolute and of Phenomenal Being, and to show the relationship that exists between them; and this demand has been made in all Eclectical systems of Philosophy, because these are constructed for the purpose of uniting opposite ontological and psychological systems. This demand was made even by the Speculative School founded by Kant, who commenced an inquiry into the nature of subjective and objective experiences, and into the relationship between Absolute Being and the facts of the human consciousness. Kant, however, came to the conclusion, that neither the Subjective nor the Absolute could be conceived; and that natural appearances, which have their ground in sensible experience, constitute both the form and the substance of all possible knowledge: while all the writers of this school not only came to the pantheistic conclusion that Absolute and Phenomenal - Subjective and Objective -Being and Nought—are one and the same, but ended in realizing a form of Anthropomorphism, or a conception of God founded upon the facts of the human consciousness. Kant commenced this by saying, "From the cognition of Self to the cognition of the World, and through these to the Supreme Being, the progression is so natural, that it seems to resemble the logical march of Reason from the premises to the conclusion:" and his followers ended in asserting, that God first arrives at a definite self-consciousness in human nature, or through the consciousness of individual men; and thus accepted the theory of Spinoza, that all things of which we become conscious are simply modes of manifestation in the Infinite Substance, outside of which nothing can exist. The possibility of realizing Absolute Science has always been denied by the moral and sensualistic schools in Philosophy; and the reason for this is, that they are purely psychological, and therefore are constructed from, or are founded entirely upon, the facts of the natural consciousness, which present the most discordant collection of phenomena that can possibly be conceived; these being external and deceptive in character, and realized in a region of the mind which cannot become receptive either of laws from the Reason, by which absolute rationality is demanded, or of analogies from the Imagination, corresponding with these, by which it is represented; but is dependent for all its knowledge upon generalizations and classifications of these discordant phenomena by the "Fancy," under the laws of "Contrast" and "Resemblance," in a form of Unity in Diversity, by which a fictitious representation is produced that is an inversion of the real condition and relationships of things. This possibility has also been denied by the Theologians and by the Church, for the reason that the religious mind can believe in nothing higher than theological truth, and supposes the religious to be the spiritual condition of the individual: while, as we shall clearly demonstrate, Religion and Rationality are, in the natural, necessarily antagonized and destructive to each other; and the religious and the spiritual conditions of the soul are not only antagonized, but are the farthest removed from each other in the order of production. As an introduction to the present work, therefore, we will consider the grounds upon which this opposition to Absolute Science is founded; why this position has been taken, and why it cannot be sustained; and then show the ground that we have for a belief in the possibility of Absolute Science for man, and the reasons we have for believing that such a science has been realized in this work. The sensualistic philosophers have sought to obtain a ground for their opposition to Absolute Science by assuming two premises which are palpably unphilosophical: these are, the identity of the Absolute, the Spiritual, and the Infinite, which they characterize as Invisible; and the identity of Creation and the Finite, which they characterize as Visible. By thus identifying the Absolute with the Infinite, which is a universal indefinite principle, the possibility is excluded of obtaining any statement of Absolute Law, any definite conception of Absolute Creating Cause, or any recognition of an Infinite, and thus Vital, ground for Creation; and Philosophy is confined to a knowledge of phenomenal appearances and relationships, which are discordant, deceptive, and the opposite of what they seem; so that neither truth nor consistency is possible for it. By thus identifying Creation with the Finite, the possibility is excluded of recognizing this principle as one of the two Universal Causes of all Existence, or Definite Being; both of which causes, together with the manner in which they become united in production, must be conceived before a single phenomenon can really be compre hended, for the reason that all phenomena are representative of the union of Infinite and Finite Absolute Laws in the realization of Absolute Existence. In the following extract from Sir William Hamilton, who is one of the last and most popular of the English exponents of the sensualistic schools of Philosophy, this denial of any cognition by the mind of either the Absolute or the Universal, and this assertion of the purely relative character of knowledge, is so broadly stated as to approach caricature. He says, "All our knowledge is relative; that is to say, we know unity only as it is defined by plurality. It is therefore contradictory and false to say that we know the one as undefined by the many; that is, as universal. Hence I insist that the Absolute represents no substantial cognition, but only our ignorance of the irrelative. When we wish to indicate something beyond the sphere of our knowledge, we call up the Absolute to represent that unknown something. For example, we have a relative knowledge of man ; that is, of the good man as defined by the bad man, and vice versa; or of John as defined by Joseph, by Charles, by all the not Johns. When, then, we wish to deny that we are speaking of the good man, or of the bad man, or the John, we say that we are speaking of man absolutely; that is, not any man specifically defined, but freed from definition; that is, the man universal. We do not mean to say that we know this undefined universal man; because, in that case, our knowledge would be contradictory. For if it be true that we know the specific man, or the man limited by other men, it necessarily follows that the absolute man, or the man unlimited by other men, is the man we do not know." Mr. Field, who, in imitation of the German Eclectics, attempted the construction of a universal science by the individualization of natural phenomena as internal, external, and medial, has taken the same position; although, being expressed in a more scientific manner, the absurdity of the statement does not so readily appear. He says, "As there is nothing known that cannot be resolved into correlative elements, all knowledge consists of relations; and the absolute and the privative, as extremes, are equally excluded from the sphere of knowledge or philosophy. We hold, therefore, that the whole universe is, to human cognizance, a universe of relations or of analogy; and that all true analogy springs from universal relation;—that the primary relations of things are invariable and eternal, whence all knowledge is systematic and constant, inasmuch as it partakes of these universal relations, or first principles; — and, therefore, that all certainty is certainty of relation only, and not absolute; for of the absolute we have only indication, but not knowledge or comprehension." Now, it is of course true, that "the whole Universe is, to human cognizance, a universe of relations or of analogy," and that from this human and natural point of view "the absolute and the privative, as extremes, are excluded;" because the opposite universal laws which constitute the opposite poles of existence, or definite being, cannot be conceived from a natural, but only from a spiritual, point of view. This not only excludes from the natural consciousness the recognition of these opposite universal causes, but prevents the recognition of any thing that is spiritual and real, and confines it to the apprehensive recognition of the relative and representative, the nature of which it cannot comprehend, and even the existence of which it cannot demonstrate. All philosophical difficulties have arisen in this very fact, "that the Universe is to human cognizance a universe of relations," while the universal laws which must govern these relations were excluded from the consciousness; because the consequence of this has been, that the mind was obliged to seek for the spiritual law in the natural phenomenon, which contradicts while it represents it, and is the opposite of what it seems. This task has been particularly hopeless, for three reasons: first, because all natural phenomena are representative of two opposite absolute causes, while the laws which constitute their life are representative of one, and the laws which govern their production are representative of the other; next, because these phenomena are unreal appearances, which are opposite to real causes; and, finally, because, while representing laws or causes which are absolutely antagonistic, they have to be explained from a unitarian point of view, or to be regarded as harmonious or homogeneous, and explained by the application of the natural law of existence, which is Unity in Diversity, and the natural classifying law of TriUnity, by which opposite things are confounded, and nothing real can be known. It is true that ideas and laws, derived from the Reason and from the Sentiment, representative of vital spiritual ideas and laws, have been discordantly combined with these unreal natural appearances which are opposite to them, and have communicated to them a natural vitality, by which some of the mischievous effects that they are calculated to produce have been counteracted; but when these ideas and laws come to be repudiated, as they must be in the development of the mind from within outwards, — in consequence of a demand by the natural |