to avoid a mode of speaking which might give rise to great misconception. And this is the more desirable the more needful it is at all times carefully to distinguish between the true and sound reason and its contrary. God is the author of the sound reason, _i.e._, of the reason which follows and is obedient to the divine order. But the other, the rebellious reason, has for its source that spirit of negation which every where opposes God, and has drawn so great a part of creation after him in his fall. For, having lost his true center, and finding none in himself, that evil spirit, with indescribable desire and raging passionateness, seeks to find one in the disordered world of sense, and in its noblest ornament--even in the soul of man, the very jewel of creation. And this is even the origin of the rebellious reason. And it is rebellious even because having wandered from its center in the loving soul, which again has its center in God, it has thrown off the obedience of love, that holy bond which retains the soul in subjection to the divine order. How far in the present day, amid the fermenting rationalistic medley which constitutes the spirit of the age, that sound reason which willingly follows and observes the divine order, or that rebellious reason which is absolute in itself, has the upper hand, and forms the predominant element, is a question easy of solution. It is one which I am content to leave to the decision of all who are in any degree acquainted with the prevailing tone of science and of life. The philosophy which I have here undertaken to develop, setting out from the soul as the beginning and first subject of its speculations, contemplates the mind or spirit as its highest and supreme object. Accordingly, in its doctrine of the Deity, directly opposing every rationalistic tendency, it conceives of Him and represents him as a living spirit, a personal God, and not merely as an absolute reason, or a rational order. If, therefore, for the sake of distinction, it requires some peculiar and characteristic designation, it might, in contrast with those errors of Materialism and Idealism which I have described and condemned, be very aptly termed Spiritualism. But our doctrine is not any such system of reason as the others pretend to be. It is an inward experimental science of a higher order. Such a designation, consequently, bespeaking as it does, a pretension of system, is not very appropriate, and is, at all events, superfluous. It is best indicated by a simple name, such as we have given it in calling it a philosophy of life.