is reminiscence all." How much more, if he that inquires be a holy and
godlike soul! For, by being assimilated to the original soul, by whom,
and after whom, all things subsist, the soul of man does then easily
flow into all things, and all things flow into it: they mix: and he
is present and sympathetic with their structure and law.

This path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. The ancients
called it ecstasy or absence,--a getting out of their bodies to think.
All religious history contains traces of the trance of saints,--a
beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad;
"the flight," Plotinus called it, "of the alone to the alone." The
trances of Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, Fox, Pascal,
Guion, Swedenborg, will readily come to mind. But what as readily comes
to mind, is the accompaniment of disease. This beatitude comes in
terror, and with shocks to the mind of the receiver. "It o'erinforms
the tenement of clay," and drives the man mad; or, gives a certain
violent bias, which taints his judgment. In the chief examples of
religious illumination, somewhat morbid, has mingled, in spite of the
unquestionable increase of mental power. Must the highest good drag
after it a quality which neutralizes and discredits it?--

"Indeed it takes
From our achievements, when performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute."

Shall we say, that the economical mother disburses so much earth and
so much fire, by weight and metre, to make a man, and will not add a
pennyweight, though a nation is perishing for a leader? Therefore, the
men of God purchased their science by folly or pain. If you will have
pure carbon, carbuncle, or diamond, to make the brain transparent, the