We meet with like contradictions concerning the origin of evil.

To explain this problem,--one of the profoundest in philosophy,--M.

Lamennais at one time denies evil, at another makes God the author of evil, and at still another seeks outside of God a first cause which is not God,--an amalgam of _entites_ more or less incoherent, borrowed from Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, I might say even from all philosophers.
Having thus established his trinity of hypotheses, M.Lamennais deduces therefrom, by a badly connected chain of analogies, his whole philosophy.

And it is here especially that we notice the syncretism which is peculiar to him.

The theory of M.Lamennais embraces all systems, and supports all opinions.