OF VITAL MOTION. 135 



human soul the collective experience of its whole past 

 existence. And this this, perchance, is the dread 

 book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics 

 every idle word is recorded ! Yea, in the very nature 

 of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven 

 and earth should pass away, than that a single act 

 a single thought should be loosened or lost from 

 that living chain of causes, to all whose links, 

 fconscious or unconscious, the free will our only 

 absolute self is co-extensive and co-present." 



Mind, therefore, we may conclude from these con- 

 siderations, is an essence in which there is an absence 

 of the signs of perishability which we are accustomed 

 to regard as distinctive of the body. And this is one 

 property of mind. 



2. Nor is the mind subject to time in the ordinary 

 sense of the word. On the contrary, it wanders con- 

 tinually from the present into the past, and from the 

 past into the untried domains of futurity. Under 

 the influence of mind, also, the present itself is of un- 

 certain duration, and a day may become as a moment, 

 and a moment as a day. The hours, for example, 

 pass along and leave no impression when the spirit is 

 free from care and anxiety, or a moment of anguish 

 may be so preternaturally dilated that we can hardly 

 believe what we have felt and suffered to have been 

 confined to this short space of time. There is a 

 hidden truth in the Arabian romance of the caliph 



