ily analyzed than
they can be. The ends to be answered in nature by the same set of
instruments are in many cases so various, and in some respects
so limit and traverse one another, that though the same multiplicity
of ends is attained more completely, and in higher aggregate
perfection, than by any device which man's ingenuity could substitute
for them, yet those instruments are necessarily very complex at
the best. Look, for example, at the system of organs by which,
variously employed, we utter the infinite variety of articulate sounds,
perform the most necessary of all vital functions (that of respiration),
masticate solid food, and swallow fluids. The miracle is, that any one
set of organs in any conceivable juxtaposition should suffice to
discharge with such amazing facility and rapidity these different and
rapidly alternated functions; yet I suppose few who have studied
anatomy will deny, that, though relatively to the variety of purposes
it has to perform the apparatus is very simple, it is absolutely
very complex; and that its parts play into one another with great
facility indeed, but with endless intricacy.

To apply these observations to my special object. To one who attentively
studies man's immaterial anatomy, much the same complexity is, I think,
apparent; the philosopher is too apt to assume it to be much more simple
than it is. It is the very error, as I conceive, into which some of
you modern "spiritualists" fall when considering the phenomena of our
religious nature. You do not sufficiently regard man as a complicated
unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities
of his nature,--the different parts of it, sensational, emotional,
intellectual, moral, spiritual,--as set off from one another by a
sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for
immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon
each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in
one indivisible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most
intricate machine: and it can rarely happen that the particular
phenomena of our interior nature we happen to be investigating do
not involve many others. Throughout his book on the "Soul," we find
Mr. Newman employing expressions (though I admit there are others
which contradict them) which imply that the phenomena of religion, of
what he calls "spiritual insight," may be viewed in clearer distinction
from those of the intell