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)

First edition. Former library copy - usual marks. 1864 Hard Cover. 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.…