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82 which neither needs nor allows the surrender of the whole nature to another being, and cannot entertain that confidence in foreign strength in which religion especially manifests itself. The very circumstances, even, which dispose the soul to revert to ideas of religion, assume a different significance from this same diversity of character. With one, every powerful emotion, every impulse to joy or sorrow, suffices; with another, the simple and spontaneous outflow of gratitude for enjoyment. Perhaps such a disposition as this to which we have last referred, is far from being the least estimable. While those whom it characterizes have a confident strength of their own, which does not urge them to look for external help in trial and misfortune, they have, on the other hand, too keen a sense of the feeling of being loved, not to associate with the idea of enjoyment the endearing image of a loving benefactor. The longing for religious ideas, moreover, has often a still nobler, purer, and, so to speak, a still more intellectual source. Whatever man beholds in the world around him, he perceives only through the medium of the senses; the pure essence is nowhere immediately revealed to his gaze; even that which inspires him with the most ardent love and enthusiasm, and takes the strongest hold on his whole nature, is mysteriously shrouded in the densest veil. There are some minds to which this sentiment is most constantly and vividly present; the engrossing object of their lifelong activity is a striving to penetrate this mysterious vesture,—their whole pleasure, a presentiment of truth in the enigma which is enwrapped in the symbol—a hope of uninterruptedly contemplating it in other periods of existence. Now it is when, in wonderful and beautiful harmony, the spirit is thus restlessly searching, and the heart fondly yearning, for this immediate contemplation of the actual existence—when the scantiness of conception does not suffice to the