"No, it must be acquired by each man for himself. We can only tell others 'we see.'"
"I only know that I wish I could see!"
"We see by faith."
"And what is faith?"
"It is a power of the soul as much higher than reason as reason is higher than sense."
"Some men may possess such power, but I do not."
"You at least have an imagination."
"Yes."
"Well, faith is but the imagination spiritualized."
Mantel regarded the man who spoke in these terse and pregnant sentences with astonishment. "This," said he, "is not the same language in which you addressed the people in the Battery. This is the language of a philosopher! Do all lumbermen in the west speak thus?"