dashta, and also at _first_ by Schelling, viz., that
the _absolute_ is the first principle of all things; and this absolute
is not to be conceived of as possessing any attribute at all--not even
that of existence. A system a little less abstract is that of the
Eleatics, who believed in the absolute as existing. Then that of
Giordano Bruno, who made _soul_ and _matter_ the formative principle and
the principal recipient of forces--to be the ground of the universe.
Then Spinoza, who postulated _thought_ as the representative of the
spiritual, and _extension_ as that of the material principle; and
these together are his _originaux_. From thence sprang the spiritual
pantheists--such as Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel--and the material
pantheists.

_Wednesday, April 10th._--To-morrow I go to Andover. Have been
indescribably hurried of late. Have finished Claudius--am reading
Prometheus and Kant's Critique. _April 19th_.--Am reading Seneca's Medea
and Southey's Life of Cowper.

ANDOVER, _May 13th._--Dr. Woods was remarking to-day at dinner on the
influence of _hope_ in sustaining under the severest sufferings. It
recalled a thought which occurred to me the other day in reading
Prometheus; that, regarded as an example of unyielding determination and
unconquerable fortitude he is not equal to Milton's Satan. For he
has before him not only the _hope_, but the _certainty_ of ultimate
deliverance, whereas Satan bears himself up, by the mere force of
his will, unsustained by hope, "which comes to all," but not to him.
_15th_.--It has just occurred to me that the doctrine of the soul's
mortality seems to have _no_ point of contact with humanity. It surely
can not have been entertained as being agreeable to man's _wishes_. And
what is there in the system of things, or in the nature of the mind, to
suggest it? On the contrary, everything looks in an opposite direction.
How is it _possible_ to help seeing that the soul is not here in its
proper element, in its native air? How is it possible to escape the
conviction that all its unsatisfied yearnings, its baffled aims, its
restless, agonizing aspirings after a _something_, clearly perceived
to exist, but to be here unattainable--that all these things point
to _another_ life, the _only_ true life of the soul? There is such a
manifest disproportion between all objects of earthly attainment and the
capacities of the spirit, that, unless man is immortal, he is vastly
more to be pitied than t