Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/863

1858.] kind of tremulous apprehension,—but to see what effect the camp would produce on the state of feeling which I had begun to look at as something normal in my mental development. The rest of the party had gone out in two boats, and three of the guides, taking another, went on an excursion of their own; the two remaining, having cleared the supper-things away and lighted their pipes, were engaged in their tent, playing old sledge by the light of a single candle. There was a race out on the lake, and a far-off merriment, with an occasional halloo, like a suggestion of a busy world somewhere, but all so softened and toned down that it did not jar on my tranquillity. There was a crackling fire of green logs as large as the guides could lift and lay on, and they simmered in the blaze, and lit up the surrounding tree-trunks and the overhanging foliage, and faintly explored the recesses of the forest beyond. I lay on the blankets, and near to me seemed to sit my dæmon, ready to be questioned.

At this instant there came a doubt of the theological position of my ghostly vis-a-vis, and I abruptly thought the question, "Who are you?"

"Nobody," replied the dæmon, oracularly.

This I knew in one sense to be true; and I replied, "But you know what I mean. Don't trifle. Of what nature is your personality?"

"Do you think," it replied, "that personality is necessary to existence? We are spirit."

"But wherein, save in the having or not having a body, do you differ from me?"

"In all the consequences of that difference."

"Very well,—go on."

"Don't you see that without your circumstances you are only half a being?—that you are shaped by the action and reaction between your own mind and surrounding things, and that the body is the only medium of this action and reaction? Do you not see that without this there would have been no consciousness of self, and consequently neither individuality nor personality? Remove those circumstances by removing the body, and do you not remove personality?"

"But," said I, "you certainly have individuality, and wherein does that differ from personality?"

"Possibly you commit two mistakes," replied the dæmon. "As to the distinction, it is one with a difference. You are personal to yourself, individual to others; and we, though individual to you, may be still impersonal. If spirit takes form from having something to act on, the fact that we act on you is sufficient, so far as you are concerned, to cause an individuality."

I hesitated, puzzled.

It went on: "Don't you see that the inertia of spirit is motion, as that of matter is rest? Now compare this universal spirit to a river flowing tranquilly, and which in itself gives no evidence of motion, save when it meets with some inert point of resistance. This point of resistance has the effect of action in itself, and you attribute to it all the eddies and ripples produced. You must see that your own immobility is the cause of the phenomena of life which give you your apparent existence;—our individuality to you may be just as much the effect of your personality; you find us only responsive to your own mental state."

I was conscious of a sophistry somewhere, but could not, for the life of me, detect it. I thought of the Tempter; I almost feared to listen to another word; but the dæmon seemed so fair, so rational, and, above all, so confident of truth, that I could not entertain my fears.

"But," said I, finally, "if my personality is owing to my physical circumstances, to my body and its immobility, what is the body itself owing to?"

"All physical or organic existence is owing to the antagonism between certain particles of matter, fixed and resistant, and the all-pervading, ever-flowing spirit; the different inertiæ conflict, and end by combining in an organic being, since neither can be annihilated or