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22, and that "there are many things in heaven and earth" insoluble by the best patented philosophies, whether material or otherwise. For the rest, she says that at one time, while intent on the study of Descartes and Malebranche, she used curiously to watch her kitten, considering it as a piece of mechanism going through its evolutions. But it seemed to her that in separating feeling from its manifestations she was dissecting the world and robbing it of all its charms; and she would sooner have adopted Spinoza's view, and ascribed a soul to everything rather than go without the belief in one. But on the whole, whenever her feelings were deeply moved she willingly recurred to the belief in a beneficent Creator and the immortality of the soul. While these thoughts were agitating her inwardly, she was fearful of communicating them to Sophie, for fear of exposing her to like mental disturbances. But what was her surprise on learning from her friend's letter that, without any prompting from without, she had been passing through a similar crisis! In her delight at this news, she writes in May 1772:—"By what strange coincidence of mutual similarity do you always trace my story in writing your own? Or rather, why does the openness with which you show me your heart reproach me for having hidden from you what was passing in mine? Without wishing to excuse my silence, you shall know its reason."

Superfluous to enter into her explanation. She confesses that a high self-esteem is her besetting sin, ingenuously exclaiming, "I am evidently so conceited that this same self-esteem hinders me from seeing the many faults which must of course be mine." But in reality she was not so far wrong, and had hit her one cardinal failing: