 Stedman and Hutchinson, comps.  A Library of American
Literature: An Anthology in Eleven Volumes.  1891. The Human
Soul By Frederic Henry Hedge (1805–1890) [Born in Cambridge,
Mass., 1805. Died there, 1890. Ways of the Spirit, and Other
Essays. 1877.]  ALL conscious being springs from a root unknown.
Of all life the origin is lost to itself in blank
unconsciousness. We reach back with our recollection and find no
beginning of existence. Who of us knows anything except by
report of the first two years of earthly life? Who remembers the
time when he first said “I,” or thought “I”? We began to exist
for others before we began to exist for ourselves. Our
experience is not co-extensive with our being, our memory does
not comprehend it. We bear not the root, but the root us.   What
is that root? We call it soul. Our soul, we call it: properly
speaking it is not ours, but we are its. It is not a part of us,
but we are a part of it. It is not one article in an inventory
of articles which together make up our individ