experience; and, though seemingly invisible, it must nevertheless,
constituted as we are, act through the physical, and a physical medium
expressly constructed for its peculiar action; nay, it does this
continually, without our confounding for a moment the soul with its
instrument. Who can look into the human eye, and doubt of an influence not
of the body? The form and color leave but a momentary impression, or, if
we remember them, it is only as we remember the glass through which we
have read the dark problems of the sky. But in this mysterious organ we
see not even the signs of its mystery. We see, in truth, nothing; for what
is there has neither form, nor symbol, nor any thing reducible to a
sensuous distinctness; and yet who can look into it, and not be conscious
of a real though invisible presence? In the eye of a brute, we see only a
part of the animal; it gives us little beyond the palpable outward; at
most, it is but the focal point of its fierce, or gentle, affectionate, or
timorous character,--the character of the species, But in man, neither
gentleness nor fierceness can be more than as relative conditions,--the
outward moods of his unseen spirit; while the spirit itself, that daily
and hourly sends forth its good and evil, to take shape from the body,
still sits in darkness. Yet have we that which can surely reach it; even
our own spirit. By this it is that we can enter into another's soul, sound
its very depths, and bring up his dark thoughts, nay, place them before
him till he starts at himself; and more,--it is by this we _know_ that
even the tangible, audible, visible world is not more real than a
spiritual intercourse. And yet without the physical organ who can hold it?
We can never indeed understand, but we may not doubt, that which has its
power of proof in a single act of consciousness. Nay, we may add that we
cannot even conceive of a soul without a correlative form,--though it be
in the abstract; and _vice versâ_.

For, among the many impossibilities, it is not the least to look upon