THE INNER LIFE. 59 



the greatest purpose "which she has to accomplish, namely, the per- 

 petuity of the species. And if, -when it shall knock at the door of our 

 hearts, "vre give joy to its divine presence, and greet it as a ray of 

 ethereal loveliness flashed out of the abyss of God, it will find us 

 young, and keep us so for ever. 



The province of the soul is not the province of the intellect. The 

 spring of aU feeling is from ■within, the source of all idea from "without. 

 The one is the office of the mind, the other the possession of the heart. 

 Sentiment, an innate moral perception, is self-existent ; intellect is 

 the result of experience, and is acquired during time. Even Locke 

 admits that " though it be not sense, as having nothing to do "with 

 external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be 

 called an internal sense." The perceptions of moral beauty, of con- 

 science, of virtue, of infinity, of God, are the faculties of the soul, and 

 that takes cognizance of the outer "world only to read therein the 

 symbols of its 0"wn egressive law, and the constant exodus of its highest 

 intelligence. It is only through the channel of the memory that the 

 mind can take cognizance of a state of feeling or a sentiment ; for the 

 emotions of the heart — love, friendship, paternal care, pity or remorse, 

 are not processes of logical sequence — are independent and foreign to 

 all analysis, and are states or conditions self- induced -to accord with 

 the symbols which exist outwardly ; as positive electricity always 

 generates in the body with which it comes in contact a negative fluid, 

 in order to restore the harmony between them. 



To the soul, "virtue is aboriginal ; self-existent, not induced. It 

 perceives and appreciates there and then, without weighing and esti- 

 mating what pertains to itself ; and plucks its own fruit where it 

 stands, if there the fruit be. It is independent of experience, and 

 does not perceive its objects in any relation as to time. In what 

 bosom soever it abides, it sheds fragrance and music, as though flowers 

 were blooming there, and angelic fingers were sweeping the tough 

 fibres of the heart, to make them overflow with melody. Every scene 

 and home of life is made sacred by it ; and nature, conscious of its 

 high relations to the Most High God, always heralds the great phases 

 of its doom. 



The tendency of the age is to sensualism on the one hand, and to 

 extreme intellectualism on the other. But however grand and im- 

 posing the achievements of the intellect, in the wonders of the labora- 

 tory or the engine-house, that alone is insufficient. We care too 



