gations into that which one would imagine he
must know most intimately, if he knows anything; and that is, his own
nature--his own mind. There is something, to one who reflects long
enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind
is for ever putting to itself respecting itself; and to which the said
mind returns from its dark caverns only an echo. We are apt, when we
speculate about the mind, to forget for the moment, that it is at once
the querist and the oracle: and to regard it as something out of itself,
like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully
enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that
it is our own wise selves who so grotesquely bewilder us. The mind, on
such occasions, takes itself (if we may so speak) into its own hands,
turns itself about itself, listens to the echo of its own voice, and
is obliged, after all, to lay itself down again with a very puzzled
expression--and acknowledge that of its very self, itself knows little
or nothing! 'I am material,' exclaims one of those whimsical beings,
to whom the heaven-descended 'Know thyself' would seem to have been
ironically addressed. 'No!--immaterial,' says another. 'I am both
material and immaterial,' exclaims, perhaps, the very same mind at
different times. 'Thought itself may be matter modified,' says one.
'Rather,' says another of the same perplexed species, 'matter is
thought modified; for what you call matter is but a phenomenon.' But are
independent and totally distinct substances, mysteriously, inexplicably
conjoined,' says a third. 'How they are conjoined we know no more than
the dead. Not so much, perhaps.' 'Do I ever cease to think,' says the
mind to itself, 'even in sleep? Is not my essence thought?' 'You
ought to know your own essence best,' all creation will reply. 'I am
confident,' says one, 'that I never do cease to think,--not even in the
soundest sleep.' 'You do, for a long time, every night of your life,'
exclaims another, equally confident and equally ignorant. 'Where do I
exist?' it goes on. 'Am I in the brain? Am I in the whole body? 'Am I
anywhere? Am I nowhere?' 'I cannot have any local existence, for I know
I am immaterial,' says one. 'I have a local existence, because I am
material,' says another. 'I have a local existence, though I am not
material,' says a third. 'Are my habitual actions voluntary,' it
exclaims, 'however rapid they become; though I am unconscio