the ground on which all the activities of the soul depend, and the
conformation of this fabric determines the duration of the spiritual
activity itself, and the degree of ease with which it works. Here, then,
we find ourselves in possession of the first member of the connection
between the two natures.



S 6.--Objections against the Connection of the Two Natures, drawn from
Ideas of Morality.


There is no doubt that thus much will be conceded; but the next remark
will be: "Here ends, too, any determining influence the body may possess;
beyond this point the body is but the soul's inert companion, with whom
she must sustain a constant battle, attendance on whose necessities robs
her of all leisure, whose attacks and interruptions break the thread of
the most intricate speculation, and drive the spirit from the clearest
and plainest conceptions into a chaotic complexity of the senses, whose
pleasures remove the greatest part of our fellow-creatures far from their
high original, and reduce them to the level of the beasts, which, in a
word, entangles them in a slavery from which death only can deliver them.
Is it not senseless and injust," our complainer might go on to say, "to
mix up a being, simple, necessary, that has its subsistence in itself,
with another being that moves in an eternal whirl, exposed to every
chance and change, and becomes the victim of every external necessity?"
On cooler afterthought we shall perhaps see a great beauty take its rise
out of this apparent confusion and want of plan.