The hypothesis I have just mentioned, might even be applied to the sudden acquisition of all the means proper to communicate ideas; and to the prompt discoveries of the other properties of our mind; but several of these properties constitute, in such an essential manner, the essence of the soul, that we cannot, even in imagination, separate them, any more than we can detach action from will, and will from thought. There are some spiritual faculties, and those the most wonderful, which we cannot define, and which we should not have even supposed to exist had we not possessed them; and if it had been possible to have known them before we were endowed with them, the inventors of systems would have pointed out this astonishing means, as the only one applicable to the composition of the admirable harmony of the universe. We shall be led to the same reflections, when ceasing to expatiate on the greatest wonders of our nature, we bound ourselves to consider the human mind at the moment when its action may be perceived. To render this observation clearer, let us follow a man of genius in the course of his labours, and we shall see him at once embrace a multitude of ideas, compare them, notwithstanding their distance, and form from such a mixture a distinct result proper to direct his public or private conduct; let us consider him extending and multiplying these first combinations, and connecting them, by an invisible web, to some scattered points which his imagination has fixed in the vast regions of futurity; with the assistance of these magic succours we see him approaching the time which does not yet exist; but we see him, in his career, aided by accumulated knowledge, more subtle than the rays of the sun and yet separated, with an admirable order; more fleet and dispersed than the light vapours of the morning, and still subject to the will of that inconceivable power, which, under the name of memory, heaps up the acquisitions of the mind, in order to assist it afterwards in its new acquirements: but let us examine still further this man of genius, when he deposits, by means of writing, his different reflections; and let us ask, how he knows quickly, that an idea is new, and that a style has an original turn? Let us again enquire, how, in order to form such a judgment, he makes with celerity a recapitulation of the thoughts and images employed by others, to illustrate the subjects they have treated, whilst years and ages were rolling away; in short, let every one, according to his strength, try to penetrate into these mysterious beauties of the human understanding; and let him enquire afterwards about the impression which he receives from a like meditation. There is, perhaps, as great a difference, if I may be allowed to say so, between the most perfect vegetable and the human mind, as between it and the Deity: to extend this idea, we have only to suppose, that in the immensity which surrounds us, there exists a gradation equal to that we