Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

14 LETTERS.
I was glad for twhat you said concerning the state
of the affections with regard to the perception of
elevated truths.
I believe the more you look inward the more you
will be convinced of the truth of what vou advanced
on that point, and that, too, not merely in a general
point of view, but as applied to your own mind, and
the different states of your own mind. When wishing to defend a truth merely from the love of intellectual power, or for the sake of appearing supetrior
to some other person, I have felt my mind dtarkened,
a thick fog arose, and scarcely one fine edge of lighlt
gave token of the glories I had hidden from myself:
but while sitting in my own apairtment, looking out
upon the water or the hleavens, or, in childish mood,
watching the perpetual motion of the doves opposite
my wvindow, unconscious (as the "Edinburgh" says)
of the existence of any of the little passions and impure motives which at once blind and harass the intellect, in suchE a state of feeling, the satme truth, that
I had before lost in darkness, is written on the mrind
with the power and certainty of a sunbeam; and to
doubt it would appear to me as insane as to require
proof that the moon is not an optical delusion.
I believe ther e can be no real religion where reason
does not perform her high and very important office,
but here again comes the important point, reason
cannot do her perfeet work unless the affections are
pure. If we wish a thing to be true, or to m.lake it
appear true, for the sake of our patrty or our theory,
or because it gives us an apparent superiority in
morals, in intellect, - in a word, if self mingles with
the motive, "the tree of knowledge is not the triee of
life." We may imagine that it makes us as gods,