MIND AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL. 271 



be time enough to begin to investigate when we can 

 conceive the nature, distinct from the properties, of the 

 least of the particles entering into the composition of 

 one of the filaments of the down upon a blade of 

 grass ; though even when we have succeeded in per- 

 fectly comprehending this, and much more than this, 

 what right have we to presume that nothing can 

 exist which is beyond the sphere of our compre- 

 hension ? The nature of the soul is probably such as 

 man in his present state has neither words to describe 

 nor faculties to understand. His efforts to do so, like 

 the attempts of one born blind to conceive and describe 

 the nature of light, are perhaps as unreasonable in 

 their object, as they have hitherto been unsuccessful 

 in their result ; and, for aught we know, a true sixth 

 sense (for who shall say that every possible form of 

 sense has been in man exhausted ?), with all the new 

 ideas which would thus rise, may still be necessary 

 before it can be comprehended and expressed. What 

 would be the consequence of a further insight 

 whether it would assist us in our duties, or divert us 

 from the performance of them, is very uncertain. 

 The withering arid impious inference, therefore, which 

 has sometimes been drawn of the mortality of the soul 

 from that of mind, is as totally unwarrantable on the 

 one hand as the whining and canting exception which 

 has been so commonly taken to the mortality of the 

 mind, from the supposed necessity of that inference. 

 We cannot conceive, it is said, the nature of the soul 

 distinct from the mind. God alone knows how little 

 the most profound of us, big with the conceit of pene- 

 trating into the sublimest mysteries of His greatest 



