We rank ourselves with the second party, and conceive that we must cease speaking of ‘the mind,’ and discontinue enlisting in our investigations a spiritual essence, the existence of which cannot be proved, but which tends to mystify and perplex a question sufficiently clear if we confine ourselves to the consideration of organised matter—­its forms—­its changes—­and its aberrations from normal structure. [31:1]

The eccentric Count de Caylus, when on his death-bed, was visited by some near relation and a pious Bishop, who hoped that under such trying circumstance he would manifest some concern respecting those ‘spiritual’ blessings which, while in health, he had uniformly treated with contempt.  After a long pause he broke silence by saying, ’Ah, my friends, I see you are anxious about my soul;’ whereupon they pricked up their ears with delight; before, however, any reply could be made the Count added, ’but the fact is I have not got one, and really my good friends you must allow me to know best.’

If people in general had one tenth the good sense of this impious Count, the fooleries of Spiritualism would at once give place to the philosophy of Materialism, and none would waste time in talking or writing about non-entities.  All would know that what theologians call sometimes spirit, sometimes soul, and sometimes mind, is an imaginary existence.  All would know that the terms immaterial something do in very truth mean nothing.  Count de Caylus died as became a man convinced that soul is not an entity, and that upon the dissolution of our ‘earthly tabernacle’, the particles composing it cease to perform vital functions, and return to the shoreless ocean of Eternal Being.  Pietists may be shocked by such nonchalance in the face of their ’grim monster;’ but philosophers will admire an indifference to inevitable consequences resulting from profoundest love of truth and contempt of superstition.  Count de Caylus was a Materialist, and no Materialist can consistently feel the least alarm at the approach of what superstitionists have every reason to consider the ‘king of terrors.’  Believers in the reality of immaterial existence cannot be ‘proper’ Materialists.  Obviously, therefore, no believers in the reality of God can be bona fide Materialists; for ‘God’ is a name signifying something or nothing; in other terms matter or that which is not matter.  If the latter, to Materialists the name is meaningless—­sound without sense.  If the former, they at once pronounce it a name too many; because it expresses nothing that their word MATTER does not express better.

Dr. Young held in horror the Materialist’s ‘universe of dust.’  But there is nothing either bad or contemptible in dust—­man is dust—­all will be dust.  A dusty universe, however, shocked the poetic Doctor, whose writings analogise with—­

          Rich windows that exclude the light,
          And passages that lead to nothing.