32 



which bend the rays of light towards the earth ; thus stars ap* 

 pear above the horizon after they are set. Terrestrial objects of- 

 ten appear elevated, depressed, or double, in consequence of the 

 different strata of atmosphere, possessing different degrees of den- 

 sity, caused by difference of temperature. Many of these diffi- 

 culties in the way of truth which owe their origin to these last 

 mentioned causes nifty be removed. But there are constitutional 

 defects in the organs of external sense which can never be en- 

 tirely removed ; this is not the case, however, with the mental 

 sense, for there is not a rational man on earth who, if rightly edu- 

 cated, could not perceive all the elementary truths of intellectual 

 and moral science. The truths of geometry are alike perceived 

 by all minds that perceive them at all. Our duty to God and 

 our fellow beings is so clear to all minds that if all the millions 

 of human beings on earth could have the same degree of knowl- 

 edge, they would agree in every case relating to moral and reli- 

 gious duty, so thai, there would not be found one dissenting 

 voice. Thus we perceive that the mental or spiritual sense is 

 founded in unchangable laws of psychological science, and after 

 it is once developed, may exist independent of the external senses 

 which depend on a material organism, and are destined to share 

 in its dissolution; like the flower that dies with the plant that sus- 

 tained it, while the spiritual sense is reserved as in the seed that 

 survives the change of death. 



Having established the high powers and indistructibility of the 

 mental sources of sense, we perceive that anew world is brought 

 to view, without which nature would lose all her charms and 

 become a lifeless corpse a body without a soul ; and there are 

 those who have wandered far away into this new region without 

 knowing how they got there. They see new beauties and har- 

 monies, the source of which they do not fully comprehend. Like 

 the immortal Socrates, charmed with his distant and imperfect 

 view of a pure system of moral truth, or like the holy men of o'd 

 inspired with the gift of prophetic endowment, they feel what 

 they cannot explain to other minds. They become transcen- 

 dentalists, and their writings become incomprehensible to the or- 

 dinary reader. 



