partly challenged and straightened out.

The flux, however, was meantime full of method, if only discrimination
and enlarged experience could have managed to divine it. Its
inconstancy, for one thing, was not so entire that no objects could be
fixed within it, or marshalled in groups, like the birds that flock
together. Animals could be readily distinguished from the things about
them, their rate of mobility being so much quicker; and one animal in
particular would at once be singled out, a more constant follower than
any dog, and one whose energies were not merely felt but often
spontaneously exerted--a phenomenon which appeared in no other part of
the world. This singular animal every one called himself. One object was
thus discovered to be the vehicle for perceiving and affecting all the
others, a movable seat or tower from which the world might be surveyed.

[Sidenote: The notion of spirit.]

The external influences to which this body, with its discoursing mind,
seemed to be subject were by no means all visible and material. Just as
one's own body was moved by passions and thoughts which no one else
could see--and this secrecy was a subject for much wonder and
self-congratulation--so evidently other things had a spirit within or
above them to endow them with wit and power. It was not so much to
contain sensation that this spirit was needed (for the body could very
well feel) as to contrive plans of action and discharge sudden force
into the world on momentous occasions. How deep-drawn, how far-reaching,
this spirit might be was not easily determined; but it seemed to have
unaccountable ways and to come and go from distant habitations. Things
past, for instance, were still open to its inspection; the mind was not
credited with constructing a fresh image of the past which might more or
less resemble that past; a ray of supernatural light, rather, sometimes
could pierce to the past itself and revisit its unchangeable depths. The
future, though more rarely, was open to spirit in exactly the same
fashion; destiny could on occasion be observed. Things distant and
preternatural were similarly seen in dreams. There could be no doubt
that all those objects existed; the only question was where they might
lie and in what manner they might operate. A vision was a visitation and
a dream was a journey. The spirit was a great traveller, and just as it
could dart in every direction over both space and time, so it could
come then