'And yet, this faith, Elinor, which, in religion, you renounce, despise, or defy, because in religion you would think, feel, and believe by demonstration alone, you insensibly admit in nearly all things else! Have you it not in morals? Does society exist but by faith? Does friendship,--I will not name what is so open to controversy as love,--but say! has friendship any other tie? has honour any other bond than faith? We have no proofs, no demonstrations of worth that can reach the regions of the heart: we judge but by effects; we believe but by analogies; we love, we esteem, we trust but by credulity, by faith! For where is the mathematician who can calculate what may be pronounced of the mind, from what is seen in the countenance, or uttered by speech? yet is any one therefore so wretched, as not to feel any social reliance beyond what he can mathematically demonstrate to be merited?' 'And to what but that, Albert, precisely that, do we owe being so perpetually duped and betrayed? to what but building upon false trust? upon appearance, and not certainty?' 'Certainty, Elinor! Where, and in what is certainty to be found? If you disclaim belief in immortality upon faith, as insufficient to satisfy reason, what is the basis even of your disbelief? Is it not faith also? When you demand the proofs of immortality, let me demand, in return, what are your proofs of materialism? And, till you can bring to demonstration the operations of the soul while we live, presume not to decide upon its extinction when we die! Of the corporeal machine, on the contrary, speak at pleasure; you have before you all your documents for ratiocination and decision; but, life once over,--when you have placed the limbs, closed the eyes, arranged the form,--can you arrange the mind?--the soul?' 'Excite no doubts in me, Harleigh!--my creed is fixed.' 'When sleep overtakes us,' he continued, 'and all, to the beholder, looks the picture of death, save that the breath still heaves the bosom;--what is it that guards entire, uninjured, the mind? the faculties? It is not our consciousness,--we have none! Where is the soul in that period? Gone it is not, for we are sensible to all that had preceded its suspension, the moment that we awake. Yet, in that state of periodical insensibility, what, but experience, could make those who view us believe that we could ever rise, speak, move, or think again? How inert is the body! How helpless, how useless, how incapable? Do we see who is near us? Do we hear who addresses us? Do we know when the most frightful crimes are committed by our sides? What, I demand, is our consciousness? We have not the most distant of any thing that passes around us: yet we open our eyes--and all is known, all is familiar again. We hear, we see, we feel, we understand!'