You have probably heard of the German who attempted to evolve a camel out of his inner consciousness. That and similar jibes are common among those persons of whom the Scriptures tell us that they are in the habit of straining at gnats; but Hawthorne believed consciousness to be a trustworthy guide. Why should he not? It was the consciousness of _self_ that raised man above the level of the brute. This was the rock from which Moses struck forth the fountain of everlasting life. Again, in “Fancy’s Show-Box” we meet with the following: “Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly tribunal, will guilty thoughts,--of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows,--will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence in the supreme court of eternity?” Is this not an induction from or corollary to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first American critic, if not the first of all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing “Elective Affinities” designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action--in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil actions. In his “Hall of Fantasy” Hawthorne mentions Goethe and Swedenborg as two literary idols of the present time who may be expected to endure through all time. Emerson makes the same prediction in one of his poems. In “Rappacini’s Daughter” Hawthorne says: “There is something truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger.” And in “The Select Party” he remarks: “To such beholders it was unreal because they lacked the imaginative faith. Had they been worthy to pass within its portals, they would have recognized the truth that the dominions which the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities become a thousand times more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet, saying, ‘This is solid and substantial! This may be called a fact!’”