2674. They were still thinking there was something of life in them, because they are living, and experiencing pleasure, and so, that they do have a life on their own, because that life is theirs. But I was allowed to reply to them that the life within is not theirs, but it is a faculty of being able to reason and to understand what is true and good, with which human beings are endowed above the wild beasts, and is therefore properly called the human principle. It is this faculty, namely, of understanding truth and goodness, from which that smoky fieriness of theirs draws its life. 1748, 24 July.