THE MIND CONCEIVES ITSELF ONLY 



having no connection with the evil, under which the 

 guilty and the innocent alike suffered. 



This idea of the Creator and Ruler of the world, 

 though always anthropomorphic, differed in its at- 

 tributes with the different minds that thought. Like 

 the familiar, half-mythical Spectre of the Brocken, in 

 the Hartz Mountains, each observer sees in the mists 

 before him, an image, vague and indistinct, but super- 

 human in size and shape ; yet to none is it the same. 

 To one it may appear as a stern, austere figure, clad 

 in the dark, scholastic robe of a Genevan Doctor ; to 

 another that of a barefooted, rope-girdled monk, 

 and to a third that of a light and graceful image of 

 innocent youth and beauty. Each sees only the pro- 

 jected shadow of himself. The first, sees only pre- 

 destination and exacting justice ; the second, abnega- 

 tion of life's duties for monastic rule ; the third, the 

 promise of life and happiness now and the hope of 

 the better life to come. 



Our own thoughts and the thoughts of others can 

 build up only what we and they have known nec- 

 essarily a copy on an enlarged or magnified scale of 

 what we are. So long as men looked only into their 

 own minds they could form an objective idea of God 

 solely from their own ideas, subjectively considered. 

 To view the Universe as an evidence of the nature of 

 God, was looked upon as debasing bv the Metaphysi- 

 327 



