Are you a materialist?
Suppress, as useless _entites_, the three persons in God; then, starting directly from heat, light, and electro-magnetism,--which, according to the author, are the three original fluids, the three primary external manifestations of Will, Intelligence, and Love,--you have a materialistic and atheistic cosmogony.

On the contrary, are you wedded to spiritualism?
With the theory of the immateriality of the body, you are able to see everywhere nothing but spirits.

Finally, if you incline to pantheism, you will be satisfied by M.Lamennais, who formally teaches that the world is not an EMANATION from Divinity,--which is pure pantheism,--but a FLOW of Divinity.
I do not pretend, however, to deny that "L'Esquisse" contains some excellent things; but, by the author's declaration, these things are not original with him; it is the system which is his.

That is undoubtedly the reason why M.Lamennais speaks so contemptuously of his predecessors in philosophy, and disdains to quote his originals.

He thinks that, since "L'Esquisse" contains all true philosophy, the world will lose nothing when the names and works of the old philosophers perish.