the imaginative truths of the mental products, or mental combinations. Of
the nature and mode of operation of the Power to which we refer, we know,
and can know, nothing; it is one of those secrets of our being which He
who made us has kept to himself. And we should be content with the
assurance, that we have in it a sure and intuitive guide to a reverent
knowledge of the beauty and grandeur of his works,--nay, of his own
adorable reality. And who shall gainsay it, should we add, that this
mysterious Power is essentially immanent in that "breath of life," by
which man becomes "a living soul"?

In the following remarks we shall confine ourself to the first
class of Ideas, namely, the Real; leaving the second to be noticed
hereafter.

As to number, ideas are limited only by the number of kinds, without
direct relation to degrees; every object, therefore, having in itself
a _distinctive essential_, has also its distinct idea; while two
or more objects of the same kind, however differing in degree, must
consequently refer only to one and the same. For instance, though a
hundred animals should differ in size, strength, or color, yet, if
none of these peculiarities are essential to the species, they would
all refer to the same supreme idea.

The same law applies equally, and with the same limitation, to
the essential differences in the intellectual, the moral, and the
spiritual. All ideas, however, have but a potential existence until
they are called into the consciousness by some real object; the
required condition of the object being a predetermined correspondence,
or correlation. Every such object we term an _assimilant_.