In the mysterious beginnings of life physical development takes the first place. Nature is busily at work in the child's body as it grows, and is already preparing it to be the dwelling-place of higher functions. The body reaches the acme of its perfection before its career is half over, and out of the surplus of its energy calls new life into being. Thenceforward its lot is decay and painful struggling to preserve its own existence. During something like a third of our existence, that is, while we are asleep, the body receives no commands from its ruler, and yet the heart beats without interruption, the tissues are wasted and repaired, and the process of respiration is continued, all independently of our will. The servant may even rebel against the master, as when our muscles are painfully contracted by cramp. But pain is the summons for help which is sent by the living organism when it has lost control over the dead matter, which loss we feel as the illness of our vassal. On the whole we must regard our body as a real part of our being, which is still, in a sense, external to our inmost selves. Is, then, the soul at least the true ego, a single and indivisible whole? The intellect advances, by slow development, to greater and greater perfection till old age is reached, if the body does not leave it in the lurch. The critical faculty grows as experience accumulates, but memory, reason's handmaid, disappears at an earlier stage, or at least loses the power of receiving new impressions. Wonderful enough is this faculty which enables us to store up all the valuable lessons and experiences of earliest youth in a thousand drawers, which open in a moment in answer to the requirements of the mind. It is not to be disputed that the old often appear dull-witted, but I cannot believe in a real darkening of the reason, which is a bright spark of the Divine, and even in madness the negation of reason is only external and apparent. A deaf man playing on an instrument out of tune may strike the right notes, and be inwardly persuaded that his execution is faultless, while all around him hear nothing but the wildest discords. The sovereignty of reason is absolute; she recognizes no superior authority. No power, not even that of our own wills, can compel her to regard as false what she has already recognized as true. _E pur si muove_! Thought ranges through the infinite realms of starry space, and fathoms the inscrutable depths of the minutest life, finding nowhere any _limit_, but everywhere _law_, which is the immediate expression of the divine thought.