e desire to philosophize away that simple
proposition of a Divine First Cause, which every child can comprehend,
led two of the greatest geniuses and profoundest reasoners of modern
times,--La Place and La Marck.(13) Certainly, the more you examine those
arch phantasmagorists, the philosophers who would leave nothing in the
universe but their own delusions, the more your intellectual pride may
be humbled. The wildest phenomena which have startled you are not more
extravagant than the grave explanations which intellectual presumption
adventures on the elements of our own organism and the relations between
the world of matter and the world of ideas."

Here our conversation stopped, for Amy had now joined us, and, looking
up to reply, I saw the child's innocent face between me and the furrowed
brow of the old man.

(1) See, on the theory elaborated from this principle, Dr. Hibbert's
interesting and valuable work on the "Philosophy of Apparitions."

(2) What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of the
most accomplished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W. Hamilton):

"Somnambulism is a phenomenon still more astonishing (than dreaming).
In this singular state a person performs a regular series of rational
actions, and those frequently of the most difficult and delicate nature;
and what is still more marvellous, with a talent to which he could make
no pretension when awake. (Cr. Ancillon, Essais Philos. ii. 161.) His
memory and reminiscence supply him with recollections of words and
things which, perhaps, never were at his disposal in the ordinary
state,--he speaks more fluently a more refined language. And if we
are to credit what the evidence on which it rests hardly allows us to
disbelieve, he has not only perception of things through other channels
than the common organs of sense, but the sphere of his cognition
is amplified to an extent far beyond the limits to which sensible
perception is confined. This subject is one of the most perplexing in
the whole compass of philosophy; for, on the one hand, the phenomena are
so remarkable that they cannot be believed, and yet, on the other, they
are of so unambiguous and palpable a character, and the witnesses to
their reality are so numerous, so intelligent, and so high above every
suspicion of deceit, that it is equally impossible to deny credit to
what is attested by such ample and un exceptionable evidence."--Sir W.
Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Lo