It is true Mr. Ward's very profound theories contradict an immense number of facts observed by wiser men than himself, but so much the worse for the facts,--they must not embarrass a Smithsonian philosopher when he solves to his own satisfaction the vast problem of the universe. This Mr. Ward thinks he has done. It is quite an ingenious and laboriously constructed hypothesis, but like all other attempts to construct a grand philosophy without a basis of fact, it is hard to manufacture the theory and hard to comprehend it. Mr. Ward says himself in the _Open Court_ that even to comprehend his doctrine would require the "careful reading of nearly 200 pages," while "to see the matter in precisely the same light as I see it would require the reading of the entire work of some 1400 pages!" Really, Mr. Ward, the writer who cannot sufficiently befuddle himself and his readers in fifty pages is not very skilful. Nevertheless the Ward theory is one of the best that has ever been gotten up by the champions of nescience, and is worthy of a statement in the Journal as quite an improvement on the common expression of materialistic stolidity. He claims that he does not deny immortality, but he recognizes no immortality of man--no human soul. He recognizes only the immortality of the world, such as it is, which nobody denies. The future life of man he considers nothing but an illusion, though there is an immortality of intelligence _here_ in successive forms. The doctrine, is that spirit, intelligence, or consciousness is a part of matter--that every atom has its own little share, which practically amounts to nothing in its infinite subdivision, but when matter comes into organized forms the spiritual powers thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human life a mere product of human tissues in combination--a doctrine conclusively refuted in "Therapeutic Sarcognomy." The special merit of the Ward theory lies in the supposition that mind and matter are elements everywhere inseparably united, and that human intelligence is developed by the aggregation and organization of the mind powers that reside in the atoms of matter,--an explanation which does not often occur to the exponents of materialism,--and has the merit of ingenuity. The theory would do very well if it were not demonstrable that life exists only from influx, and that human life and personality survive the body, and become known to every highly organized sensitive, who knows how to investigate such matters.