Such must necessarily be the conclusion of those who accept the doctrines of Lehi as truth from an inspired source. The conclusion is woven into the very fabric of things—of existences—of the universe. It cannot be otherwise. The opposite, the absence of one or the other member in a given series of antitheses is unthinkable. The fact of the existence of opposite existences must be recognized as a necessary truth—a truth the opposite of which is inconceivable.

The thing to marvel at is the fact of the statement of this truth being found in the Book of Mormon in the absolute, conclusive form in which it is couched; and this from any view point from which it may be approached. . . . Nowhere else in the theology or the philosophy of ancient times is there any utterance upon the subject equal to it in the explicity, comprehensiveness, and surely not in conclusiveness.

. . .

If the point of approach to account for this Book of Mormon passage in to deny the validity of the Book of Mormon account of its origin, and repudiate it an an utterance of an ancient American prophet, and hold it to be the awkward presentation of the idea by Joseph Smith while writing the Book of Mormon (most likely the view of my questioner), then the wonder of its presence in the Nephite record is not decreased. For either it must be said that Joseph Smith by innate, untaught philosophy reached these great and sublime heights of abstract thought (and that they are such heights of thought we shall see before the close of this article), or else it must be shown that such thoughts and conclusions upon the problems of opposite existences and the puzzle of moral evil were matters of such common knowledge and general discussion in the time and the vicinity of Joseph Smith when the Book of Mormon was undergoing production, that it was possible for him to gather up from such common knowledge and general discussion such Ideas and put them into the mouth of his prophet Lehi of the fifth century B. C.

Is it possible that this could be the solution? Emphatically no: for the reason that no such ideas were prevalent anywhere in the time of Joseph Smith during the production of the Book of Mormon, 1823-1830: and most assuredly not in the vicinity of Joseph Smith during those years, viz, western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Surely he did not obtain Lehi's philosophical passage from books, for in the first place he was not a reader of books; and in the second place there were no books extant, I am bold to say, containing any such doctrine of opposite existences and founding upon them such conclusions a those arrived at by Lehi. That there may have been casual mention of the timeworn problem of evil in the books extant at the time-early decades of the nineteenth century-may be true: but what I deny to the books of that period and available to ordinary readers of those times is any book dealing in a large way with these problems, and in none of them where casual mention is made of the problem of evil will be found conclusions of the nature of Lehi's pronouncements.