It is evident, then, that _matter_, the only thing
the materialist concedes real existence, is simply an orderly
phantasmagoria; and God and soul, which materialists regard as mere
fictions of the imagination, are the only conceptions that answer to
real existence.[87]

For instance, let us see what it is we know about a table. You say you
can see it; I can respond that all you are conscious of is that the
nerves of your eye have undergone a change. You say, I can check my
sight of it by touching it; to this I reply, all that you are really
conscious of is a sensation, and that something outside of you has
produced it. But that all that is outside of me is anything more than
the manifestation to me of a power or of God, is an inference and cannot
be proven. To constant manifestations of this power, always assuming the
same form and characters which can be studied, different names have been
given; but that the dust of the street or beat of our heart is anything
else but that peculiar manifestation of the infinite God, cannot be
contradicted.

Mr. Savage says, "The movement of electricity along a telegraph-line is
accompanied by certain molecular changes in the wire itself; but the
wire is not electricity, neither does it produce it. Thus modern science
has found it utterly impossible to explain mind either as a part or a
product of matter. It is perfectly reasonable, then, for any man to
believe in a purely intellectual and spiritual existence, apart from any
material form or substance."

To comprehend the immortal life is an impossibility; it transcends any
earthly experience of man. The caterpillar probably knows nothing about
any life higher than that of his toilsome crawling on the ground; but
that is no proof against the fact that we know he is to become a
butterfly. The boy knows nothing about manhood, and cannot know. Though
he sees men and their labors all about him, he has and can have no
conception whatever of what it means to be a man; it transcends all
experience.[88] "The existence," says Fiske, "of a single soul, or
congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied by a material body,
would be evidence sufficient to demonstrate this hypothesis. But in the
nature of things, even were there a million such souls round about us,
we could not become aware of the existence of one of them; for we have
no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material
structure and activities in which it has b