That faculty and that line of thought, which have given so readily the solution of the difficulties brought to view by Mr. Spencer's examination of the outer world, will afford us an easier solution, if possible, of the difficulties which he has raised respecting the inner world. That which is not of us, but is far from us, may perchance be imperfectly known; but ourselves, what we are, and the laws of our being, may be certainly and accurately known. And this is the highest knowledge. It may be important, as an element of culture, that we become acquainted with many facts respecting the outer world. It cannot but be of the utmost importance, that we know ourselves; for thus only can we fulfil the behest of that likeness to God, in which we were originally created. We seek for, we may obtain, we _have obtained_ knowledge in the inner world,--a knowledge sure, steadfast, immutable. It seems to be more than a mere verbal criticism, rather a fundamental one, that it is not "our states of consciousness" which "occur in succession"; but that the modifications in our consciousness so occur. Consciousness is _one_, and retains that oneness throughout all modifications. These occur in the unity, as items of experience affect it. Is this series of modifications "of consciousness infinite or finite"? To this question experience _can_ give no answer. All experiments are irrelevant; because these can only be after the faculty of consciousness is. They can go no further back than the _forms_ of the activity. These they may find, but they cannot account for. A law lies on all those powers by which an experiment may be made, which forever estops them from attaining to the substance of the power which lies back of the form. The eye cannot examine itself. The Sense, as mental capacity for the reception of impressions, cannot analyze its constituents. The Understanding, as connective faculty concluding in judgments, is impotent to discover why it must judge one way and not another. It is only when we ascend to the Reason that we reach the region of true knowledge. Here, overlooking, analyzing all the conduct of the lower powers, and holding the self right in the full blaze of the Eye of self, Man attains a true and fundamental _self-knowledge_. From this Mount of Vision we know that infinity and finiteness have no pertinence to modifications of consciousness, or in fact to any series. We attain to the further knowledge that this series is, _must be_, limited; because the constituted beings, in whom it in each case inheres, are limited, and had a beginning. It matters not now to inquire how a self-conscious person could be created. It is sufficient to know that one has been created. This fact involves the further fact that consciousness, as an actuality, began in the order of nature, after the being to whom it belongs as endowment, or, in other words, an organization must be, before the modifications which inhere in that organization can become.