accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to recollect what was
the nature and value of its subject and its slave.

By the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks,
the seat of sensation and reason. Where it resides we cannot
tell, nor can authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says,
relatively to a particular phenomenon, "whether it is in the
body, or out of the body." Be it however where or what it may,
it is this which constitutes the great essence of, and gives
value to, our existence; and all the wonders of our microcosm
would without it be a form only, destined immediately to perish,
and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley.

It was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an
eminent physiologer and anatomist, that, when I find my attention
called to any particular part or member of my body, I may be
morally sure that there is something amiss in the processes of
that part or member. As long as the whole economy of the frame
goes on well and without interruption, our attention is not
called to it. The intellectual man is like a disembodied spirit.

He is almost in the state of the dervise in the Arabian Nights,
who had the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of
another, human or brute, while he left his own body in the
condition of an insensible carcase, till it should be revivified
by the same or some other spirit. When I am, as it is vulgarly
understood, in a state of motion, I use my limbs as the
implements of my will. When, in a quiescent state of the body, I
continue to think, to reflect and to reason, I use, it may be,
the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking,