"A branching channel, with a mazy flood? The purple stream that through my vessels glides, Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides: The pipes through which the circling juices stray, Are not that thinking I, no more than they: This frame compacted with transcendent skill, Of moving joints obedient to my will, Nurs'd from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, Waxes and wastes; I call it mine, not me." _Dr. Arbuthnot._ "'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Clothes. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to Know, to Believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true SHEKINAH is Man:" where else is the GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow man?'"--_Sartor Resartus_, Chap. x. Pure Reason. SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER III. This Chapter may be characterized as a parallel between the difficulties alleged to be fatal against Theism, and the difficulties attaching to very various departments of human knowledge, embracing its most necessary and its most certainly accepted kinds. From this parallel the conclusion becomes evident, that whoever accepts one set of truths cannot be debarred by these or similar difficulties from accepting the higher truth likewise. That such an acceptance is natural and valid appears further evident from the fact that a knowledge of God belongs to the class of Practical beliefs, and is enforced by the same reasonable necessity. This topic forms the transition to Chapter IV. on "Our Reasonable Beliefs." The same inferences are also stated in a _destructive_ form, _e.g._, Should a thinker choose to deny the possibility of Theism, he ought (if consistent) to deny all those truths which stand or fall by a parallel set of reasonings. But by doing this he lands himself in a state of doubt, so extreme and thorough, that the whole Universe becomes a rayless blank. A corollary is added on Materialism.