Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=KJtWAAAAcAAJ
(The British Library)
"Pouvons-nous pas dire, qu'il n'y a rien en nous, pendantcette prisonterrestre, purement, ni corporel ni spirituel?" asks good oldMontaigne, and certain it is that in many an act where we imagine thebody alone takes part, the spirit has as great a share; and in many athought where the mind seems to divest herself of clay, the impulsewas given by the body, not the soul. But besides the contentionbetween the corporeal and spiritual part of our nature, and the sortof swindling that goes on on both sides, he that looks into his ownheart must acknowledge with him of old, that there seem to be twospirits within us. I do not only mean two spirits distinguished bytheir promptings to good and evil, but two principles separate intheir nature, in their objects, and in their ultimate dwelling-place,the one tending to the earth, the other aspiring to the heavens; theone the principle of animal existence, the other the principle ofimmortal life; the one shared with the brutes that perish, the otherthat essence which raises us above them here and hereafter. What shallwe call these two spirits? How shall we distinguish them, the one fromthe other, in speaking of them hereafter? Let us name the higher andthe purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, thespirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, whicheach uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to asa judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this strugglebetween these two principles that turns the greater part of each man'smoral history.
One of the strangest points in that contest is, that the spirit ofthe soul, as we have called the one, appeals less frequently to theintellect than her earthly sister, leaving it, in general, to thelatter, as if for her uses in this earth the powers of intellect weregiven, while the soul obtains its impulses from other sources, and,marked out for a higher destiny, receives winged inspirations from theworld to which it tends--faith, conviction, sentiment, feeling,conscience;--and oh, how often does that better spirit seize the happymoment to open the eyes which all our powers of mind could notunclose, and strip the world and all its pleasures of the delusionswhich no force of intellect has been equal to dispel!
At the age of one-and-twenty years--It is a beautiful age, full of thespring, with all the vigour of manhood, without one touch of itsdecay; with all the fire of youth, without one touch of itsfeebleness! Oh, one-and-twenty! bright one-and-twenty!--wilt thounever come back to me again? No, never! The cord of the bow has beenso often drawn that it has lost its elasticity; there have been athousand flowers cast away that have withered in the dust of Time'ssandy path; there have been a thousand fruits tasted that have leftbut the rind in my hand; there have been a thousand travel stainsacquired that never can be washed off till the journey is done. Thatwhich has been lost,