"He is in the light of the eye, and in the object that it shines on. He is not a curiosity, a member of a species, or a thing to be represented by any device. He is the One-the original-the all in all." Benjamin Paul Blood's Optimism (1860) is a testament to the idea that spiritual experience must precede religious knowledge. Impassioned by his own mystical experiences, Blood spells out an eternal nondual philosophy in a distinctly American voice that helped shape the work of William James (Varieties of Religious Experiences) and the 19th-century religious philosophers. In Optimism, we find a timeless, practical guide to faith and acceptance of whatever life delivers.