or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being.
They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which
precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid
apprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays,
and they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and
then reasonings are the combined result of a multitude of entangled
thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted
by reiteration.

The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the
intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing exists but as
it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two
classes of thought, which are vulgarly distinguished by the names
of ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of
reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to
that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise
found to be a delusion. The words _I_, YOU, THEY, are not signs of
any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts
thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different
modifications of the one mind.

Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous
presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words _I_, and YOU, and THEY,
are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally
devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to
them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle
a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has
conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what
wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little