to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) makes man, who is immortal in understanding, mortal in belief.
What is termed matter manifests nothing but mortality. Not a glimpse or manifestation of Spirit is obtained through matter. Spirit is positive; and for positive Spirit to pass through negatives would be its destruction.
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea, governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought passes naturally from effect to cause. The point for others to decide is, whether mortal mind is causative, or the Immortal Mind. We should forsake the basis of material belief, for the facts of Science and their Principle.
The authentic history of Caspar Hauser is a useful hint as to the fraility and inadequacy of mortal mind. It proves, beyond a doubt, that education constitutes this so-called mind; and that, in turn, mortal mind avenges itself on the body, by the false sense it imparts. Incarcerated in a dungeon, where neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of seventeen Caspar was still a mental infant, crying and chatteriug with no more intelligence than a babe, and realizing Tennyson's description: —
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
His case proves material sense to be but a belief,
formed by education alone. The light that affords us
joy gave him a belief of intense pain. Fear suffused his
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