THE INNER LIFE. 
117 
sentiments. Are facts so necessary then? Have you 
exhausted all your previous stock ? Or do you sit 
brooding there for some expected truth which shall show 
you the hollowness of your ways, but which, while you 
sit there, and shut your ears to the beseechings of the 
soul, shall never come, and you shall die at last a beggar. 
The sovereignty of the intellect has dwindled into cant, 
as much soul as you can muster avails; maugre that, all 
is barrenness and ashes. Events strengthen not the 
hope, for no length of time will ever ripen the contents 
of an empty barrel. If the intellect is our highest 
faculty, how comes it that so many of those who have 
been so highly endowed with this inheritance, have only 
died at last covered with shame at the perverted nature 
of their lives?—who, while stalking like petty gods 
among men, and transcending by the giant powers of 
their minds, have yet left a blight and pestilence in their 
path, as venemous reptiles leave their slimy tracks behind 
them. The names of Alexander, Pericles, Aspasia, 
Cataline, Alcibiades, Mirabeau, and Napoleon, only sug¬ 
gest a thousand more which might be quoted. And 
much to be deplored are the effects of our systems of 
trade, commerce, and education, in checking the growth 
of the best sentiments of our nature. The slow and 
steady calculations of gain and loss are appended, like 
badges of charity, to every effort which the pure soul 
would make to rescue some relic of itself from the wreck 
and destruction in which it finds itself immersed, and 
which threaten almost to strike God from the world. 
The influence of the senses is to circumscribe all things, 
and make the w 7 alls of space and time look solid and real, 
