Philosophical

TO the student of the origins of Christianity there is naturally no period of Western history of greater interest and importance than the first century of our era; and yet how little comparatively is known about it of a really definite and reliable nature. If it be a subject of lasting regret that no non-Christian writer of the first century had sufficient intuition of the future to record even a line of information concerning the birth and growth of what was to be the religion of the Western world, equally disappointing is it to find so little definite information of the general social and religious conditions of the time.

The treasures of ancient high art lately unearthed at Luxor have excited the admiring interest of a breathless world, and have awakened more vividly than before a sense of the vast antiquity of the so-called 'Modern Civilization,' as it existed over three thousand year ago in far-off Ancient Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia.

The economic and social order of the modern world exhibits a strange enigma, which only a prosperous thoughtlessness can regard with indifference or, indeed, without a shudder. We have made such splendid advances in art and science that the unlimited forces of nature have been brought into subjection, and only await our command to perform for us all our disagreeable and onerous tasks, and to wring from the soil and prepare for use whatever man, the master of the world, may need.

One of the most vital and pregnant books in our modern literature, "Sartor Resartus" is also, in structure and form, one of the most daringly original. It defies exact classification. It is not a philosophic treatise. It is not an autobiography. It is not a romance. Yet in a sense it is all these combined.

This book makes no pretense of giving to the world a new theory of the intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact that it is an attempt, not to supersede, but to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have been either promulgated on its subject by speculative writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their scientific inquiries.

This work now recovers for us those epoch-making culture heroes who originated civilization, with their long-lost real names, personalities and authentic records of achievements and exploits, as truly historical kings of fixed dates, who have left us many of their actual contemporary inscribed monuments, along with full lists of their early kings and dynasties with their regnal years, extending continuously back to the rise of civilization; for they are disclosed as being already at that epoch a scientific people, accustomed to writing and calculation by calendar years and possessed of a keen historical sense.

No excuse is needed for presenting to the English reader a History of Medi