IRITUAL UNIVERSE.

It is with humility really unassumed--it is with a sentiment even of
awe--that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable
subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn--the most
comprehensive--the most difficult--the most august.

What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their
sublimity--sufficiently sublime in their simplicity--for the mere
enunciation of my theme?

I design to speak of the _Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical--of the
Material and Spiritual Universe:--of its Essence, its Origin, its
Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny_. I shall be so rash,
moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to
question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly
reverenced of men.

In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce--not the
theorem which I hope to demonstrate--for, whatever the mathematicians may
assert, there is, in this world at least, _no such thing_ as
demonstration--but the ruling idea which, throughout this volume, I shall
be continually endeavoring to suggest.

My general proposition, then, is this:--_In the Original Unity of the
First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of
their Inevitable Annihilation_.

In illustration of this idea, I propose to take such a survey of the
Universe that the mind may be able really to receive and to perceive an
individual impression.

He who from the top of AEtna casts his eyes leisurely around, is affected
chiefly by the _extent_ and _diversity_ of the scene. Only by a rapid
whirling on his heel could he hope to comprehend the panorama in the
sublimity of its _oneness_. But as, on the summit of AEtna, _no_ man has
thought of whirling on his heel, so no man has ever taken into his brain
the full uniqueness of the prospect; and so, again, whatever
considerations lie involved in this uniqueness, have as yet no practical
existence for mankind.

I do not know a treatise in which a survey of the _Universe_--using the
word in its most comprehensive and only legitimate acceptation--is taken
at all:--and it may be as well here to mention that by the term
"Universe," wherever employed without qualification in this essay, I
mean to designate _the utmost conceivable expanse of space, with all
things, spiritual and material, that can be imagined to exist within the
compass of that expanse_. In speaking of what is ordinarily implied by
the e