, we
cannot see what practical parturition can come of his mighty labor. He
offers nothing which is capable of becoming incorporated with the
existing intelligence of the age. He furnishes no acceptable basis for
the caution of maturity or the generous vision of youth. Charles Lamb's
recipe for witnessing with any quietude of conscience the artificial
comedy of the last century was, to regard the whole as a passing
pageant, and to accept with cheerful unconcern its issues for life and
death. Some such state of mind must be commended to the student of this
Philosophy. Let him be indifferent to that great act of political
justice which Abraham Lincoln was constrained to do. Let him have no
glow of satisfaction in the improved condition of woman, allowed to own
herself and to hold the property which her labor accumulates. Let him
not remember how she has repaid every effort made in her behalf by
marking the gauge upon the thermometer of civilization, and by raising
man as he raises her. In short, let him provisionally stand upon such a
platform as might be constructed by a committee of which Legree was
chairman and Bluebeard the rest of it, and if he does not accept
"Absolute Science," he will at least be patient in reading what may be
said in its behalf. But if, in justice to ourselves, we present the
obvious objections of the general reader, in justice to Mr. Frothingham,
we are bound to confess that they shrivel in the blaze of special
illumination with which he has been favored. He grants the value of
effort as it appears in the accepted channels of the day, but contends
that its value is confined to the development and growth of the
individual who exercises it. It furnishes a groundwork which at the
right time shall provide the material suggestive of supernatural
thought. It prepares the sacrifice that will be necessary in view of the
new order of spiritual experiences now presented for the first time to
the consciousness of man.

It scarcely need be said that Mr. Frothingham does not expect to make
many proselytes. He is well aware that his stupendous gift of a supreme
and ultimate Philosophy will produce no perceptible effect upon the
public. A complaint of taxes and a gossip of stocks continue audible;
but no neighbor drops in to tell us that the Mystery of Mysteries has
received elucidation, and that a man may know even as he is known. It is
fortunate that the lofty aim of a sincere and earnest thinker is its own