dogmatism, the most contradictory conclusions respecting its very self! To think that Mind does not know whether it always thinks; whether, for half its time, it is conscious or unconscious, busy or idle !

The dialogue began something in this way. I, who felt disposed to think that the mind always thinks, even in the deepest slumber, that is, dreams even when it does not remember it,asked myself,

"Do you not acknowledge that we know nothing of either matter or mind, except from their properties; the one made known to us by our sensations, and the other by our consciousness?"

"I do," said Mind, with the confidence of an oracle, though thus avowing its ignorance of itself.

"If you were asked what Matter was, would you not say, that it is that which possesses solidity, divisibility, impenetrability, and so on?" enumerating the other essential qualities of matter. "I should," said Mind.

"And in like manner would you not say, Mind is that which possesses the qualities of thought and feeling?"

"I should," still said Mind.

"If, now, you were asked what matter was, when divested of those essential properties, stripped of solidity, and so forth,— what would you say? Would you not say that if it ceased to have such essential properties, that which you called matter existed no longer-that it was annihilated ?"

"I should," Mind said.

"Then ought you not to say the same of mind, if its essential properties-those by which alone you know that it exists at all

were taken away from it? Ought you not, therefore, to say that mind is annihilated every time you sleep, if you sleep without thinking; and created afresh every time you awake from such a state?"

I really thought it was a very pretty little dilemma; but Mind could argue though it could not prove, and was not going to be balked by such a trifle as the loss of its essential properties.

"Nay," said Mind, "the powers of thought remain in me, though not exerted."

"Nay," said I; "you surely are not impudent enough to pretend that you are conscious that you have powers while you say you have absolutely no consciousness? But let that pass. -Would you say, then, if you could conceive of such a thing as matter denuded of what is its essential property of solidity, that the power of solidity was there, only no longer exercised? Would you not rather say that, for aught you could conceive, matter, which you knew only by such properties as this, existed no longer ?"

"I certainly should," sighed Mind.

"Then you ought to say the same of mind.”

Argument the first; which made me think that the mind always thinks, though Mind itself protested against it. But Mind retorted it very cleverly. It began to illustrate the point, first, from chemical facts which show that heat, for example, is present in bodies, though latent; and that the same substance may exist in allotropic forms; nevertheless the matter did not seem quite plain to me. But it ingeniously proceeded to say,

"Do you not think that the mind exists before it acts? The mind in the embryo, for example, of the 'rational animal,' the moment it comes into the world, — must it not already exist before it acts? and does it not wait to exercise thought and feeling till, by a slow process, the senses aid its developments. If so, does not the mind exist, though its essential powers be dormant? And if so, may it not be in just such a state in deep sleep?"

This seemed a staggerer, I confess; but I was a bold metaphysician, and I scrupled not to rejoin,- forgetting the rebuke I had administered to Mind for falling into a like blunder, —“ If, by saying that the mind of the embryo, or of the newly-born infant, cannot think, you mean that it cannot understand the 'Principia' of Newton or Milton's Paradise Lost,' I grant it; but I deny that it does not manifest its essential properties, though not in perfection. Mind feels, and that is one of the forms of consciousness;-it has sensations."

Surely," said Mind slyly, "you have not the impudence to pretend that you are conscious that you had feelings in states of which you are wholly unconscious. But let that pass, as you said to me. -Pray, had you thoughts in that state as well as feelings ?"

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Yes, and thoughts," said I, boldly, for I was not going to give up my argument for a trifle,-"thoughts, though very rudimentary, of course; for how can there be sensation without thought? So that though," I continued, with exquisite logical precision, “though in the order of thought, the existence of the mind is before its action, yet in fact its existence and its action are synchronous; and the one begins when the other does."

Argument second ;—and still I seemed to think that the argument for perpetual thought had the best of it, though I confess I felt that myself and I were whimsically perplexed about a matter which ought surely to have been as plain as consciousness could make it!

Here we left the dark maze of essences, and essential properties, and embryo states, and came out into the open champaign of facts, and the inductive philosophy. "Now," thought I, "we shall be able to see." Not a whit. Luckless Mind! Bacon might as well not have written, for any power his philosophy gives of solving such a question,—which, however, would seem to need no solving at all, but a simple reference to every man's own consciousness. But now for facts.

"If," said I, in a didactic and patronising way, as though I were not talking to myself and striving to enlighten my own ignorance, "If you take notice, Mind, you will find, on awaking from sleep, that, on instantly reverting to consciousness, you have always been thinking, dreaming of something, and will immediately recall it."

But Mind, after a minute's reflection, protested that it had no such uniform consciousness-that it thought it often recollected having been awakened out of profound sleep, with an utter blank of memory when it sought for what it was last thinking about. Here was a fix; Mind not knowing whether it had been thinking

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the moment before or not! "Oh ! Mind, Mind," thought I, innocently, "what a fool you are making of yourself!" The first person would have been more proper.

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"But again," said Mind, "as to that last argument, supposing the fact just as you state, it proves nothing; the mind is so active that long trains of thought, which seem to have occupied hours, may pass through the mind in a minute,-which I often experience when I take an afternoon nap; I seem to have slept for hours, and my watch tells me I have slept but for five minutes; thus the supposed recollected dream might all be manufactured in the very instant between sleeping and waking." I thought again, and could not deny that it might be so. "And yet," retorted I, "though you suppose the mind so active as to crowd ages into moments, you suppose it is actually dormant during the greater part of every night? And again,-granting, as you say, that you can spin, what seems to be six hours' dreaming, in a minute,— you cannot tell, except by the watch, whether you have been a minute or six hours about it, and often think the last when you have been asleep but for an instant! Of what value," said I, complacently, as if I were no way concerned in the rebuke, "is the testimony of one that is thus caught napping? In short, Mind, to tell you a bit of my mind, I do not believe you know a word about the matter."

Mind smiled, and said it knew just as much as I did; which recalled me to the most paradoxical fact of all,—that it is we ourselves who in such controversies ask ourselves what is our own consciousness, and, instead of giving an intelligible answer, can only stare at ourselves idiotically. . . . .

....

Yours faithfully,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER XXXVIII.

My dear Niece,

To Miss Mary Greyson.

Sutton, July 7, 1846.

I am going to write you a long letter; but I scarcely think it will be pleasant to you to read it,—for it is to chide you. Yet, as you know I should not chide you except for your good, or what I believed your good, I hope you will read these lines attentively for your loving uncle's sake.

I saw, my dear, with regret, during my recent visit, that you are too fond far too fond-of novel reading. There; I see your imploring look, and hear the expostulation, "Oh! uncle —do you really think so?" Of course I think so, Mary, or I should not say so, for I never say what I do not think.

But I certainly do not expect to hear from you, my love, for you are a girl of sense (be pleased to recollect, again, that I do not say what I do not think, will not that propitiate you?), — the answer I once received from a young lady to whom I addressed a similar expostulation. "I suppose, then," said she, "you would disapprove of all novel reading?" That, thought I, is an answer perfectly worthy of one whose logic has been fed on novels. "If," said I to her, "I were to blame a lad for eating too much, or too voraciously, or filling his stomach with tarts and sugarplums, would you infer that therefore I meant that he was not to eat at all, or that pastry and sweetmeats were absolutely forbidden him?

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No, I am far from thinking that novels may not be innocently read; so far from that, I think they may be beneficially read. But all depends, as in the case of the tarts and sugar-plums, on the quality and quantity.

The imagination is a faculty given us by God as much as any other, and if it be not developed, our minds are maimed. Now, works of fiction, of a high order, I mean, such as the best of