"To have a variety of changing states attributed to it as the subject of them all - this is to demonstrate in consciousness a claim to real being. Unchanging rigidity, the permanence of the mathematical point or of the material atom, on the supposition that the latter undergoes no interior changes whatever, if such rigidity and permanence anywhere exist, constitutes no claim to the title of real being.

"The soul exists in reality, above all other kinds of being, because it alone, so far as we know on good evidence, knows itself as the subject of its own states; or, indeed, knows the states of which it is the subject as states belonging to itself. But its law is that of development: and, unlike all 'things' which are subjects of various kinds of evolution, so called, the soul can recognize the law of its own being. When, therefore, we are asked what the mind really is, we can respond by telling what it comes to be as the result of its unfolding under the fixed conditions of its native powers. But these ' powers' cannot be called native, as though they were actual achievements of the mind's inborn faculties, or separate forms of energy inherent in it, after the analogy of the forces said [somewhat unintelligibly, it must be admitted,] to be 'inherent' in the atom.

"But we do not define the nature of any real being simply by stating how it appears and behaves in its most germinal and undeveloped form. The tree explains the seed; the adult bird, the egg; the character of the highly differentiated product must be studied in order to know the full description of the energies that are potential in the simple stages. It is an undoubted fact that the mind [soul] has a history in each individual case; and in each case such history is a development. This self-recoguizing unity of development which belongs to the mind is a striking proof of the validity of its claim to be considered a real being. As the being which acts and knows itself as acting, which is acted upon and knows itself affected, which is the subject of states and itself attributes these states to itself, which develops according to a plan and so remembers and comprehends the significance of the past states that it can recognize the fact of its own development - as such a being the mind [soul] is more entitled to consider itself ' real' than to consider real any of the various objects that, immediately or indirectly, appear before it in the course of its history." *

There is still another faculty of the mind which is, if possible, even more undiscoverable in and unrelated to any definite physical basis than those heretofore considered. This is that aspect or phase of consciousness known as the Feelings. Just what feeling consists in escapes definition. It is an innate, underived power of consciousness. It accompanies all sensation and all ideation, while it itself may be and often is experienced independently of any other conscious state. It is, therefore, upon this plane at least, a basic aspect evidently of consciousness, if not the very essence of this itself. For all sense of personal identity may be lost, as in chloroform narcosis; all thought may cease, as in yoga or other concentration; all will may be suspended, as in the passivity of mediumship; or these may be annulled or suspended together in moments of terror, surprise, joy, or pleasure. Yet, untouched by all, burns the steady light of a conscious center which feels that it exists, or, rather, that it IS. That feeling is related to this phenomenal world by the sense organs, is evident.

That it is modified as to its states by these, follows as a necessary corollary, else there would be no reason for or even possibility of the association; but that it arises, de novo, out of any possible combination of merely fortuitous molecular activities is simply absurd. It measures all sensation, as to whether it is painful, pleasurable, or neutral (if such a state can exist); it equally accompanies thought, and classifies this by its own inherent analytical powers as belonging to or connected with one or other of the higher activities of the mind, such as imaginative, religious, moral, esthetical, etc. It binds all the other faculties of the mind into an unity such as is unexplainable except as the conscious functioning of a self-conscious Ego. Feeling accompanies all possible experience. Whether one hate or love, whether he live in intellectual realms or those of sensuous emotions, feeling accompanies each state so faithfully that the only explanation of this is that it is the presence of a self- conscious soul, exercising an underived and underivable power innate in consciousness itself, and hence a ray from or an aspect of the Causeless Cause, in its finite manifestation.

* Loc. Cit., D. 680:

All the evidence thus adduced to prove the presence of a soul as a necessary deduction from physiological phenomena must not be understood as asserting, or even indicating, that this soul is capable of being analyzed and its nature explained, because we can prove its existence. There is no phenomenon, nor entity, nor being in the universe which does not at last escape analysis by disappearing in the great Unknowable Source of All, the Causeless Cause. But it would seem the height of unphilosophic reasoning to admit the reality of the fleeting and illusionary beings which constitute our bodies, together with their environments, and then to deny the real existence of the conscious and permanent base, the Knower, Observer, and Recorder of this illusory experience. An Unknowable must always be admitted as an ultimate factor; the finite can never hope to contain or measure the Infinite, but we must beware that in our ignorance we do not relegate to this Unknowable problems which belong only to the Unknown, and which it is vital to our progress, and even our very existence, that we discover.

To this Unknown which must be discovered evidently belong inquiries such as we have been considering, as well as all phenomena which relate to the existence of the soul, the modes of its behavior, the things which retard, prevent, or accelerate its progress through the Cycle of Necessity in which it has its present being.