irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; some
plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame
is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part,
but the purer part still remains without the body. It is not drawn down
into the body, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the
man's head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part
of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the
appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is
called soul. But the incorruptible part is called the nous, and the
vulgar think it is within them, as they likewise imagine the image
reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent,
who know it to be without, call it a Daemon." And in the same learned
work ("Isis Unveiled ") we have two Christian authorities, Irenaeus and
Origen, cited for like distinction between spirit and soul in such a
manner as to show that the former must necessarily be regarded as
separable from the latter. In the distinction itself there is of course
no novelty for the most moderately well-informed. It is insisted upon
in many modern works, among which may be mentioned Heard's "Trichotomy
of Man" and Green's "Spiritual Philosophy"; the latter being an
exposition of Coleridge's opinion on this and cognate subjects. But the
difficulty of regarding the two principles as separable in fact as well
as in logic arises from the senses, if it is not the illusion of
personal identity. That we are particle, and that one part only is
immortal, the non-metaphysical mind rejects with the indignation which
is always encountered by a proposition that is at once distasteful and
unintelligible. Yet perhaps it is not a greater difficulty (if, indeed,
it is not the very same) than that hard saying which troubled Nicodemus,
and which has been the key-note of the mystical religious consciousness
ever since. This, however, is too extensive and deep a question to be
treated in this paper, which has for its object chiefly to call