Without entering into the subtle disputes of philosophers, with regard to the spirit, a subject on which there is a standing controversy between the disciples of Hegel and those of other teachers, I need only observe that the Scriptures seem to indicate what some of the heathen sages taught, that the spirit that dwells within us is the spirit of God, incorporated in us for a period, for certain ends of his own, to be thereby wrought out. What those ends are, it does not belong to my present subject to consider. In this spirit so imparted to us, dwells, says Eschenmayer, the conscience, which keeps watch over the body and the soul, saying, “Thus shalt thou do!” And it is to this Christ addresses himself when he bids his disciples become perfect, like their Father in heaven. The soul is subject to the spirit; and its functions are, _to will_, or _choose_, _to think_, and _to feel_, and to become thereby cognizant of the true, the beautiful, and the good; comprehending the highest principle, the highest ideal, and the most perfect happiness. The _Ego_, or _I_, is the resultant of the three forces, Pneuma, Psyche, Soma—spirit, soul, and body. In the spirit or soul, or rather in both conjoined, dwells, also, the power of _spiritual seeing_, or _intuitive knowing_; for, as there is a spiritual body, there is a spiritual eye, and a spiritual ear, and so forth; or, to speak more correctly, all these sensuous functions are comprised in one universal sense, which does not need the aid of the bodily organs; but, on the contrary, is most efficient when most freed from them. It remains to be seen whether, or in what degree, such separation can take place during life; complete it can not be till death; but whoever believes sincerely that the divine spirit dwells within him, can, I should think, find no difficulty in conceiving that, although from the temporary conditions to which that spirit is subjected, this universal faculty is limited and obscured, it must still retain its indefeasible attribute. We may naturally conclude that the most perfect state of man on earth consists in the most perfect unity of the spirit and the soul; and to those who in this life have attained the nearest to that unity will the entire assimilation of the two, after they are separated from the body, be the easiest; while to those who have lived only their intellectual and external life, this union must be extremely difficult, the soul having chosen its part with the body, and divorced itself, as much as in it lay, from the spirit. The voice of conscience is then scarcely heard; and the soul, degraded and debased, can no longer perform its functions of discerning the true, the beautiful, and the good.