Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/209

 These are: "What and where is God?" on which I intend to write some day; and the other is, "What is the Soul?" which I am now partially solving. This last has proved itself to be the profoundest of all questions, and very difficult of solution; but only so because investigators have mistaken their vocation, and analyzed a few of the faculties, qualities, and affections of the mind—all the while imagining the soul itself to be under their microscopes—whereas the soul was calmly, placidly looking on, and wondering why they were so busily intent upon examining the furze and bushes, instead of the deep, rich soil whence they sprung.

Faculty, Fancy and Dream-life are but three of the Soul's most common moods; and yet metaphysicians have confined themselves to but little else than their analysis. These are but three little rays from amidst a multitude of others, proceeding from one common source; yet, if even these were all analyzed, understood, and known, the great center whence they emanate would still remain as great a mystery as ever. Nearly all that we know of soul is really not of it, but of its methods of display. There is something more of man than life, limb, sense-faculty, affections, feeling and sex. There's a depth beneath them all, and into these deeps I believe it possible to dive, and to bring up many a pearl, and crystal, and grains of golden sand from the floor of his being—from out the silver sea of life, whose waters flow soul-ward, and have their rise beneath the throne, whereon sitteth for evermore the Infinite Eternal—the great I : Aye, it is possible to know oneself, notwithstanding that, to ninety-nine persons in a hundred, there seems to be an impenetrable cloud, circumvolving