instance as truth, beauty--a quality, I
mean.

_P._ Is not God immaterial?

_V._ There is no immateriality--it is a mere word. That which is not
matter, is not at all--unless qualities are things.

_P._ Is God, then, material?

_V._ No. [_This reply startled me very much._]

_P._ What then is he?

_V._ [_After a long pause, and mutteringly._] I see--but it is a thing
difficult to tell. [_Another long pause._] He is not spirit, for
he exists. Nor is he matter, as _you understand it_. But there are
_gradations_ of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling
the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example,
impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates
the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity
or fineness, until we arrive at a matter _unparticled_--without
particles--indivisible--_one_ and here the law of impulsion and
permeation is modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only
permeates all things but impels all things--and thus _is_ all things
within itself. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the
word "thought," is this matter in motion.

_P._ The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion
and thinking, and that the latter is the origin of the former.

_V._ Yes; and I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action
of _mind_--not of _thinking_. The unparticled matter, or God, in
quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And
the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is,
in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence;
_how_ I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never know. But the
unparticled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within
itself, is thinking.

_P._ Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the
unparticled matter?

_V._ The matters of which man is cognizant, escape the senses in
gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of
water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous
ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in
one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas
more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that
which we attach to the luminiferous ether. When we reach the latter, we
feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, o