PREFACE,

PROVIDING A SUMMARY OF OUR PHILOSOPHY.

I am concerned that, at the very beginning of our philosophy—especially its first part—my readers might be discouraged from continuing when they encounter ideas that must seem strange and unfamiliar compared to those generally accepted. They will also find unusual terminology such as a Finite, an Active, or an Elementary, and so on. These terms are not used in other philosophical treatises; or rather, they are not typically applied to the principles of mechanics, geometry, and the natural world. For this reason, it is necessary to use this preface to provide a general outline of our work, serving as a key to its contents.

Everyone can see by the light of reason that nature, following the principles of geometry, always takes the simplest path—a path natural to herself and truly mechanical. One can also see that everything in the world originates from something uncompounded original: "uncompounded"—meaning a fundamental substance not made of smaller parts; consequently, everything comes from a single source and one original cause. This original cause is passed down into the various things it creates. This is a truth that necessarily follows if new products are to be derived from those that have already been brought into being. Furthermore, no other cause could possibly exist except the one that descended, so to speak, from its first "parent" or "simple" In 18th-century philosophy, a "simple" refers to a basic, indivisible building block of reality that has no internal parts.. This cause, therefore, must be hidden within the first simple entity, and within the first being original: ens, a Latin term for an existing thing or "entity" derived from it.