Each lends to each a borrowed charm,
          Like pearls upon an Ethiop’s arm.

Ask the ‘Shepherd’ where is mind without the body? and if not at issue with himself, he must reply, mind is the man and man is the mind.

If this be so,—­if the mind is the man and the man is the mind, which none can deny who say magnetism is the magnet and the magnet magnetism—­how, in Reason’s name, can they be different, or how can the ‘Shepherd’ consistently pretend to distinguish between them:  yet he does so.  He writes about the spiritual part of man as though he really believed there is such apart.  Not satisfied, it would seem, with body, like Nonentitarians of vulgarest mould, he tenants it with Soul or Spirit, or Mind, which Soul, or Spirit, or Mind, according to his own showing, is nothing but body in action:  in other terms, organised matter performing vital functions.  Idle declamation against ‘fact mongers’ well becomes such self-stultifying dealers in fiction.  Abuse of ‘experimentarians’ is quite in keeping with the philosophy of those who maintain the reality of mind in face of their own strange statement, that magnetism is the magnet and the magnet magnetism.

But we deny that magnetism is the magnet.  Those words magnetism and magnet do not, it is true, stand for two things, but one thing:  that one and only thing called matter.  The magnet is an existence; i.e., that which moves.  Magnetism is not an existence, but phenomenon, or, if you please, phenomena.  It is the effect of which magnetic body is the immediate and obvious cause.

Cause implies action; and till Nonentitarians can explain how nothing may contrive to cause something, they should assume the virtue of modesty, even if they have it not.  To rail at ‘fact mongers’ is, doubtless, far easier than to overturn facts themselves.  The ‘Shepherd’ calls Atheists ‘Chaotics’ and Materialism ‘the philosophy of lunacy,’ which is a very free and very easy way of ‘Universalising.’  But arguments grounded on observation and experience are not to be borne down by hard names.  Man, like the magnet, is something—­he acts.  Dust and ashes he was; dust and ashes he will be.—­He may be touched, and tasted, and seen, and smelt.  In the immateriality of his composition no one believes; and none but Nonentitarians pretend to do so.  He thinks—­thinking is the very condition of his existence.  To think is to live.  To the sum total of vital manifestations we apply the term mind.  To call mind matter, or matter mind, is ridiculous—­genuine lunacy.  It would be as wise to call motion matter and wind up the spiritual work by making nothing of both.  The man who ran half round our planet in search of his soul did not succeed in finding it.  How should he when there is no such thing as soul.