gle atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of an
atom? Can you have a thought that was not suggested to you by what you
call matter?

Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all phenomena by
the caprice of gods and devils.

For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good and bad,
benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful, in some mysterious way,
produced all phenomena; that disease and health, happiness and misery,
fortune and misfortune, peace and war, life and death, success and
failure, were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that shadowy
phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that they were pleased and
displeased by the actions of men; that they sent and withheld the snow,
the light, and the rain; that they blessed the earth with harvests or
cursed it with famine; that they fed or starved the children of men;
that they crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took sides in war; that
they controlled the winds; that they gave prosperous voyages, allowing
the brave mariner to meet his wife and child inside the harbor bar, or
sent the storms, strewing the sad shores with wrecks of ships and the
bodies of men.

Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be almost innumerable. Earth,
air, and water were filled with these phantom hosts. In modern times
they have greatly decreased in number, because the second theory,--a
mingling of the supernatural and natural,--has generally been adopted.
The remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to per-form the same offices
as the hosts of yore.

It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some way be
appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifices, by prayer, by
fasting, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood of
men and beasts, by forms and ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and
prostrations, by flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of
home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the practice of celibacy,
by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men, women and
children, by covering the earth with dungeons, by burning unbelievers,
by putting chains upon the thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of
men, by believing things without evidence and against evidence, by
disbelieving and denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating
reason, by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by slandering
the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by discouraging
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