Philosophy as Absolute Science, Founded in the Universal Laws of Being, and Including Ontology, Theology, and Psychology Made One, as Spirit, Soul, and Body (Volume I)

xxxiv, 453 pp. Volume I only. Green cloth boards with gilt titles on spine. Top page ridge gilt. Despite the prominent Boston family name, little has been unearthed regarding the authors; A.L. Frothingham is presumably the father of the distinguished American archaeologist Arthur Lincoln Frothingham (1859-1823). Twenty-five years after the present work was published the authors collaborated again on the two-volume Christian Philosophy (Baltimore 1888-1890). Absolute Science is a densely worded, somewhat "transcendental" work, influenced by Boehme and Swedenborg, and showing considerable familiarity with philosophical literature, British and Continental. It is marred, however, by a racialist perspective (regrettably common within Romanticism and, thus, Transcendentalism, which was mightily concerned with heroes, "national character," the Over-soul, &c.). It is asserted here that only the Caucasian race is capable of appreciating Christian Philosophy, the highest expression of Man's being and closely associated by the authors with Transcendentalism, a discussion of which occupies pages 376-416. The work, well received by North American Review (Oct. 1864) and negatively by The New Englander (Jan. 1865), quickly slipped into obscurity. CONTENTS: The General Forms of the Universe; The General Forms of the Human Race; The Structure of the Human Constitution; Form of the Human Constitution; The Structure of Society; The Laws of Succession, or Natural Growth and Development; The Manifestation of the Sentimental Nature; The History of the State; The History of Art; Transcendentalism; Appendix.