This general description, it must be confessed, is very far from being an adequate explanation of the matter, and at best does but imperfectly convey our meaning. But perhaps a different line of thought, however bold and hazardous it may seem, may bring us far more simply to the point at present in view--a more accurate description, namely, of the peculiar property of the human mind, and of the characteristic feature which distinguishes man from other beings equally finite, but endowed in the same manner with consciousness. That the rational soul, or the reason, distinguishes him from the brutes, is a remark common and trite enough. But this is only one aspect of the matter: and must we always cast our looks downward, and never upward? What I mean is this: supposing that there are other created spirits and finite intelligences besides men, might not the comparison of their purely spiritual consciousness with man’s serve, perhaps in an eminent degree, to elucidate the distinctive properties of the human consciousness in that other aspect which is too commonly neglected? I am far from intending to make this matter a subject of investigation in the present place. I take it merely as an hypothesis, warranted, indeed, by universal tradition, and solely as an aid to elucidate the matter in hand. Universal, however, I may well call this tradition, since, agreeing in the main with what Holy Writ asserts, the oldest and most civilized nations of antiquity (among whom I need only mention the Egyptians, and especially the Persians and the Hindoos) have admitted, as a well-established fact, the existence of such finite intelligences and created spirits, invisible indeed to man, but not altogether alien to him. And as for the Greeks and Romans, if occasionally they allude to the genius of Socrates as something strange and singular, this was only because the wise Athenian spoke of this subject in peculiar language, and referred to it more habitually than was the wont of his countrymen and cotemporaries. Otherwise it was the general belief, both of Greeks and Romans, that every man has his guardian spirit or genius. Now this hypothesis being once admitted to be possible, let us inquire in what light were these ancients accustomed to regard, and what ought we to conceive of the peculiar nature of these spiritual beings in conformity with the representation of so universal a tradition?