Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/268

278 But what authorizes me to assume that this view is the true one?—to make it the final end of my critical inquiry, and of my endeavors? It is the two Christian churches which thus inquire, because in this they are agreed to censure both you and me, if we deviate from, or go beyond their dogmatical doctrines.

What authorizes me to believe in the truth of my own view? In the midst of all the world's errors to believe in the rectitude of what the eye of man can comprehend? I now approach the most innermost! May I only find words rightly to express that which, it seems to me, I have clearly comprehended?

Plato spoke of “a third eye,” which he considered himself to have within him, and which always beheld in every thing its primeval source (idea) and connection. Socrates considered himself to be enlightened and guided by a demon, or higher spirit, which told him what he ought to do or to leave undone. Christian thinkers have called this inner eye and this demon, the rational conscience of the human being. But I will retain the figure presented by Plato, as it renders my view the more intelligible.

I find this “third eye,” with its faculty of discrimination and judgment, to be possessed by all people, and in every age of the world. Above all, I find that mankind has adjudged something to be right, and something to be wrong; something to be good, and something to be evil; something to be lovely, and something to be unlovely. From this proceeds those remarkable accordances amongst all people and in all ages, notwithstanding the varieties which are called